On Reciprocity

Introduction

The reason why we love Vocal is that we can share our creativity with others and support them by commenting and encouraging them, and we hope that they will reciprocate.

Now, just because I comment on your piece does not oblige you to comment on my work. My work may bore you, and the same happens with me; sometimes people leave nice and supportive comments, and I can't find anything of theirs that I can leave a word on.

So Reciprocity

I have touched on reciprocity in the past and was sad to see how many of these wonderful creators I don't see anymore on Vocal and Facebook:

I did wonder if reciprocity was cyclical. I sometimes want to say I don't get as many comments as I used to, but then see the lack of interaction on Top Stories and Challenge placements, and think, "It's not just me".

These are virtually all my Vocal posts on reciprocity:

And a piece on reciprocity would not be complete without a link to Judey Kalchik's excellent piece on the subject:

While I get a lot of reads outside of the vocal community, it is the comments I receive on my work from other Vocal creators that make my day.

Sometimes I wake up and have so many comments that I don't have time to reply to them, let alone reciprocate. While I criticised the Vocal Home page addition to hell when it was implemented because I get exactly the same information on my Subscription feed, I now do use it to comment on the latest stories on there that catch my eye, so I feel I am just giving a bit of support to the creators I am subscribed to.

Conclusion

As I stated, we should not feel obliged to comment on someone's work because they commented on our story, but by the same token, we should not expect people to read our work if we don't read the work of other creators, and there are a few Vocal creators who expect to be read without reciprocity. Needless to say, they get no reads from me.

Thank you so much for reading, and I would love to know your opinions.

The song I included is Supertramp's "Give A Little Bit", and now you have read this, go and read some other story in your subscription feed or by someone you have never read before.