Here's a good attitude!

I have to thank my son for this lesson in perseverence.

He has been doing some Flash animation recently, and posting his short animations on a site called Newgrounds. When you post something, people dive all over it, rating it, and if you get low numbers.... BLAM.

Well, he put up his first short animation. It got BLAMMED. So, he revised it a bit, maybe added music or some other details.... BLAMMED again. [And for those of you with thick skin, this BLAMMING happens within minutes. The short little life of that short little animation is crushed mercilessly quickly.]

He went on to make something new. Put that up and sent me the link in an IM. I actually got to see it before it got BLAMMED, which happened within five minutes. My niece got there after the BLAM. She put the animation on her web space and linked to it from her blog. I linked to it from my blog. (Take THAT you Newgrounds stupid-heads!)

I started to get mad at those Newgrounds know-it-all-geeks. I mean, can't they give a kid a chance? They are merciless! Were they ever beginners? Yeah, so I was wondering how Billy was going to take this negative feedback. (It's so easy to be mercilessly negative when you're also anonymous...)

I kept my mouth shut, and watched.

Shortly, he came out and said.... "Well, I'm not putting anything else up on Newgrounds until I get a whole lot better at Flash. I just made my own web site where I can put my stuff and people can see it if they want to."

http://www.freewebs.com/glorgans_flashes/myflashes.htm

Now. Freeze frame here for a minute. What a strong, healthy attitude. What perseverence. What a clever solution to the cruel vagaries of techno-democracy. I, for one, am often crushed by the merest whisper of a criticism. Here is my adolescent son, BLAMMED several times by folks who have no problem writing negative and rude commentatires, and he just decides to go play in a different sandbox.

Is he a genius or what? Must get it from his mom....