How many people have you upset today?
We (@mnwork) get lots of lovely emails about us and our work – which is of course very nice indeed. But we also get the occasional piece of hate mail, like the one that arrived in our inbox this morning. Dispensing with any kind of conversational formalities it simply said "C**TS" - without the self imposed censorship.
And that's fine. Really it is. Rather than get upset or annoyed, it made me laugh but more than anything it just confirmed my strongly held belief that if your work isn't polarising Opinion and getting strong reactions from people then it probably isn't good enough.
The world is full of very average things made by people who don't want to upset anyone, or too eager to please their peers. I believe you have to have an Opinion - choose daddy or chips, I really don't mind, just don't say "I don't really know". And when you have Opinions and strongly held beliefs you've got to be prepared to get some flack - in fact that's part of the deal.You can't have the nice feedback without accepting that some people are going to hate what you do.
So when I see feedback like this, when something we're doing prompts people to get hot under the collar and take the time to write to us, I simply sit back, smile and think to myself "good, it's working".