Ever had a stranger walk up to you, tap your shoulder, and ask you to give them something like your change or clothes?
If you've been in this situation, you know it's not very comfortable. In fact, most people tend to shy away from the contact right away and give the inquirer the stinky-eye. And probably decide that said inquirer is off his nut.
Or it's like if you were Alice and all of sudden people be like "Kill that Jabberwocky!" and you're like "Look guys, if you haven't noticed, it's a poem. About a Jabberwock. Why the heck would I kill a poem? You're all bojangle wiggity-wack yo (You're all crazy)."
Yet people on Wattpad have no qualms approaching total strangers with no previous interactions for a read/critique request.
And, for some reason, this is becoming a daily occurrence for me right now.
I love to do critiques, I really do. But if I have had no previous contact with you and my ad is off the "Find a Critic" thread, how the hell did you find me? More importantly, why are you assuming that I'm willing to give you a critique?
I don't mind it when people I've chatted to or helped before contact me for these sort of things, but I'm talking about straight-up strangers. People whose profile pic and username I simply have never seen before.
If a critic's ad is offline or closed, there is a reason for it. It means there's other stuff going on in my life that I need to sort out before I can spend time doing critiques. And, frankly, to all those strangers who contacted as to why I can't give them a critique, it's none of your damn business.
As the tough Alice that I always imagined would say, "I'm surrounded by doolallies. This is insane. I'm leaving this flipped out, looper-filled rabbit hole. Peace!"