Welcome to the Internet

Nikon Rumors recently ran my Nikon Z9 second impressions as a guest post on their site. That was very flattering. It was also a novel experience for me – generally nobody reads what I post here on my blog, and it’s as much for my own benefit as anything else (e.g. a form of “rubber ducking” when I’m trying to figure something out, or simply a record of my thoughts for me to laugh at in years to come).

I was surprised how much traffic it brought to my site – my vague intuition was that with the content repeated wholesale there’d be no motivation for folks to visit the original.

I was also slightly surprised by the comments section (on Nikon Rumors), though upon reflection I probably shouldn’t have been. As Peter (Nikon Rumors admin) quipped to me, “Welcome to the Internet :)”.

Roughly-speaking, it seems to break down into:

Constructive

A very small portion of the feedback was constructive (and sometimes intentionally so, even), e.g. typos, my embarrassing mislabelling of a jaguar as a leopard, etc. Some was interesting in revealing unintended ambiguity in my phrasing – I always find it intriguing to find valid, different interpretations of things I wrote. It’s a worthy challenge to try to write without ambiguity.

I really appreciate when people provide useful feedback – even if it’s not well-motivated. It’s so rare in life to receive useful feedback.

Missing context

A lot of the feedback was because of missing context – many folks assumed it was a review, not merely a random collection of observations, and therefore meant to be balanced & comprehensive. Or that I’d only use the Sigma 150-600 C with the Z9 (I did mention use of other lenses, but apparently too briefly or obliquely for many to register).

That’s useful to know because it revealed I was unwittingly assuming folks would read the first impressions first, which provided a bit more context, and also assuming a lot about the reader’s mindset coming in – i.e. that they’d implicitly understand that a lot was tongue-in-cheek.

Missed sarcasm / irony / frivolity

It seems apparent from some comments that my sense of humour / writing style just didn’t sit well with many folks. I’m used to that – I hate irony and never use it all the time.

The Nikon Z9’s acrobatic abilities seemed to particularly rub many folks the wrong way, which even in retrospect I still find odd because it seems so obviously (a) a very minor concern in any case and (b) just funny, really. Many folks did wonder aloud why I had my camera loose in a car anyway, which is a totally valid question and one I didn’t think for a minute to address when I wrote the article.

(for the record, it’s mainly because I’d never really needed to before, and I like having the camera readily available – plus I’ve since figured out that I can kind of wedge the Z9 under the seats, in the rear footwells, so problem solved!)

Mean

Sadly, most feedback was acerbic and ill-intentioned. Thankfully the novelty of the occasion neutered the mean-spirited comments, and they’re easy to skim over because they tend to be repetitive, pithy, and thus easy to identify. I’m a bit mystified as to why those folks spend their time that way, though. Some kind of game? Catharsis?