The Right to Complain Isn’t Free
We tend to take the right to complain for granted. It’s usually considered a basic human right. Sometimes it is referred to as the IDF soldier’s first prerogative. But it’s not that easy. Sometimes, you lose the right to complain. Basically, when you get free stuff.
If someone gives you a gift, you can’t really complain. They didn’t have to give you anything. They did it out of the kindness of their heart. And if you complain you might discourage further gift giving in the future. And that is something you definitely don’t want to do.
Let’s take Louis C.K.’s example (of a somewhat unrelated issue) of a guy sitting in an airplane complaining that the wifi is unavailable. Yes, you can tell him to shut up because he’s hurtling through the air swiftly and safely (Something unheard of slightly more than a hundred years ago) and he is getting an internet connection while flying on a plane (something quite inconceivable just a few years ago) but he is paying for that right, paying quite a lot actually, and thus has earned the right to complain. Though, I would argue, that his right to complain is reduced if he’s not actually paying and not getting his service.
It especially irks me when I hear people complaining about pirated games. I mean, crying about a game not working when it is a cracked version. Dude, you didn’t pay for it, you don’t have the right to complain about its faults. You got it for free so shut up. Secondly, you stole it, don’t complain about bugs introduced because the game is cracked.
I think you earn the right to complain when you give something of yourself. You earn the right to complain about a service or product, when you pay for it. You earn the right to complain about the army because you serve. And you earn the right to complain about a government when you pay taxes and serve your country.
And frankly, I believe that if you’re not giving anything of yourself, or doing so by proxy (kids and their parents), you haven’t earned the right to complain. And yes, I also include the religious nuts. You are not allowed to complain about how people treat you and how the state treats you unless you give something of yourself like paying taxes or serving in the military. And if you do, I can only glare at you with contempt for you are not worthy to be my peers.
Posted in Humanity, No Category, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 4 comments.
Try thinking about the act of complaining from a different perspective.
You interact with something, invest your time and attention in it based on expectations of performance. You either get what you wanted or not. When your expectations and reality do not match you voice/communicate the problem. You may be completely wrong in your expectations, or using that something wrong way or it is simply not working properly.
If the fault is in you, you will get feedback that informs you of your error and how to fix it (wounded pride aside). If the fault is in that something than you add a warning to other potential users, and you just did a good service to the community.
If I take your most intuitive example- the pirated games complaints – those people who hack the games take it as a healthy challenge to solve these problems too, they earn lots of prestige from hacking a game, making it available for free, and sometimes even improving the experience for the end user over what the game developers did. They need those complaints to get better, or find the bizarre niche problem to fix.
regardless of the opinion of the company that made the game. these complaints are not aimed at them anyway. and to top it all these complaints often get answered and fixed by hackers faster than the companies even acknowledge legitimate complaints.
open source makes a funny world, doesn’t it.
Well, ok.
I was talking about people getting cracked games and then coming to the store or the publisher to complain.
And even with the crackers themselves, they gave you something for free, don’t complain about it!
Or at least use some restraint. Yes, you may say, “Hey guys, Batman’s gliding ability doesn’t work for some reason.” But don’t go about screaming “What the fuck is this pink scorpion I can’t kill? Your game sucks!”
Yeah ok, there is a proper civil way to make a complaint and there is the demented versions trolls on the net favor so much. I agree. Polite is better, most cases. And even when politeness fails, there is also a sort of right way to be impolite too.
How would you be impolite?