I'm not even talking about actors, and constant abuse and harassment on social media.
Any person, any job, criticizing their work at a damned party is rude.
I work on a video game series and I get it a lot - often in appropriate public contexts or events -- and I have to wheel the conversation into productive discussion and criticism for diplomacy, civility and my mental health /liberty.
Usually it's easy enough and even the rare extremely negative fans IRL have enough social sophistication to understand that I'm engaging in good faith and I usually explain why decisions were made even if they're unpopular broadly or to a small group.
A real example of this from the weekend:
Fan: "why did you guys copy Call of Duty Aim Down Sights?"
Me: "Yes we added smart link - a feature in Halo since the first game on some guns - to
all the weapons with left trigger pull because it's a convenient shorthand well understood by every other console FPS - and in Halo it doesn't really work like 'Aim Down Sights" because it doesn't snap to the target and what stickiness it has is based on the original weapon function. Medal of Honor did the reverse of that back in the day with the 'hail to the chief ' control scheme as a convenient and collegial nod.
We also do something similar with 'fishsticks' - a reference to COD. But it is not intended to nor does it function as a clone of the feature seen in other games and also cleans up some inconsistent expected weapon behaviors "
From my perspective I do owe them explanations in return for their dedication and custom - or I am willing to give them if they are willing to listen.
I never fib or dissemble and I am used to talking around spoilers or future secrets. So I sometimes judo into a different topic.
However I also understand that for every "blunt " fan who tells me without any nuance "you ruined the game when you did x" - (it's almost never something you'd expect like sprint or armor lock because the kind of person who even does this tends to have outlier opinions - always stated as if it's known, settled law - such as "ruined it when you put the covenant subtitles in localized language text instead of American") that the other 99.9% of fans were either polite or framed criticism as interesting and reasonable conversation "are you guys keeping sprint in the next game?" Or"i hope there are more chief missions next time!"
If I let the rare rude or toxic ones get to me I'd be doing a disservice to myself, the good fans and even the less socially skilled fans.
Every now and then (and it's extremely rare) I will encounter someone in person so outlandishly toxic that I can't actually manage diplomacy so I politely but firmly say 'thank you for your feedback' and remove myself from the situation. Luckily so far (aside from one or two clearly disturbed individuals and one dramatic day that involved Interpol, a serious and believable threat to my safety and an individual who was only prevented from carrying it out by good fortune) that's been about as bad as it gets and I think they've mostly sensed that my tether terminus has been reached. Apparently my face is not especially great at hiding that when I'm close to losing my temper or genuinely expecting a physical confrontation.
That's all in-person stuff. Online it's the wild west. Again 95% of people are Normal, polite or reasonable and in gaming forums criticism artfully directed to me directly is fine. I reject it out of hand in off topic places though :
Me: "I think iron man 2 was weaker than one and three and I thought it lacked focus and clarity "
Poster:"well you ruined halo by making it for sjws so you of all people shouldn't talk shit "
The missing context here is that I'm in a movie thread and I'm not speaking to Jon Favreau or Robert Downey or more accurately in terms of contribution -- the Key Grip or dolly technician for that film.
I also get heated when I see it happening to other professionals. There were a few threads on the old place where personal invective was spewed directly at creators participating of their own volition in threads about their creations. The mods and management were actually excellent at shutting that down but I used to fume seeing it happen - despite having a thicker skin for my own stuff.
I do worry from time to time that some isolated individuals are learning how to behave in real lofe - from totally socially incompatible online spaces where rhetorical modes are normally contained there and there alone.
The point is that you can absolutely converse with your audience honestly and openly about almost anything as long as basic civility is used. And sometimes that means yes, not discussing it at all.
There's zero good conversation to be had at a private birthday party by telling Daisy Ridley how shit you thought her work was. She sweated her ass off doing her best and making a critically and financially successful blockbuster. The fact that
you don't care for it is subjective and better saved for discussion or argument with people who didn't make the damn thing. Or in a best case scenario productively discussed with a producer or writer who could actually do something with respectful feedback. From that perspective if you have one small shot at making a positive impact on something you're passionate about then wasting that opportunity with rude invective is foolish and counterproductive.
That awkward five minutes could have been spent asking optimistically about the future or fondly about the past. Or just talking about the weather if you don't have anything nice to say.
