Thursday, April 13, 2017

Working my side hustle

In the latest NYCPlaywrights email I asked readers to offer any advice they might have about the web site.

I expected complaints, of course - if you ask for feedback in this kind of situation the people who are mainly motivated to write are the ones with complaints. And while some of the complaints were valid some were ridiculous.

One guy in particular, a college professor in his 70s (we have several mutual Facebook friends), sent me a list of complaints that were especially absurd. One of the complaints was that there were occasional non-calls for submissions items in the blog, which were according to him, "just free advertising."

Actually they are not free advertising - they are paid advertising.

But the best part was him whining about the fact that some of the calls for submissions are targeted to certain ethnicities, or have a women-only stipulation. He wants me to post on such calls for submissions: "This call may be in violation of Equal Opportunity Employment Protection guidelines."

Somebody needs to retire.

The most ridiculous feedback came from another guy, in his 60s at least who said that there are just too many words in the calls for submissions and the words should be in exciting fonts and there should be graphics. Apparently he thinks the function of the NYCPlaywrights calls for submission are not simply to provide information but to be aesthetically pleasing too.

On the positive side, several people wrote in to say they like the web site and everything I do. Not that I was primarily motivated to fish for compliments but that was a nice bonus.