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Lula, I agree with everything said here. I don’t think posting video is about level. It is about empathy.
Often when someone has done the work to get to a decent level they do post with empathy, kindness and compassion and they post in a constructive way when giving a critique of someone else’s play. Not always. But often.
And often, when someone is giving weird, unhelpful, overly critical or, sometimes downright ridiculous commentary, on someone else’s skills shown in video footage, they have never seen themselves play.
Frequently, once one of those people who tends to give mean or crazy commentary has everyone else see their own skills from video footage, their commentary has more compassion and tends to be more constructive. Not always. But it makes that much more likely to be the case.
But it is also about understanding who is giving the criticism.
A few years ago there was this kid giving all this crazy coaching feedback. It was things like: your stroke needs to be much bigger like Ma Long’s,” while critiquing a fairly adept touch shot. And he would start these comments with things like: “back when I was as bad as you are....”. When we finally got him to post video, it was actually clear that he did not even have the technique to have strokes. He was pushing his racket straight forward instead of taking a swing. He may have watched Ma Long videos. But he had no idea what he was and was not actually doing. He thought he was doing a perfect replica of Ma Long’s FH and really he was doing a very strange pushing movement.
Not that that really matters. Everyone has to start from somewhere. But if you heard what he said and thought, “maybe he knows what he is talking about,” a lot of what he said could have been dangerous and caused injuries. [emoji2]
There was another guy who was explaining the physics of looping backspin. And when he posted footage of himself “looping” backspin from a robot, it was clear he was just making direct contact and it was not a loop.
Seeing the footage helped people put what he was saying into a more complete context.
So, for sure, someone who is not at a high level can give good advice to someone at a higher level. But the anonymity that the internet can foster has its usefulness and its downsides.
When everyone knows what someone plays like and....sort of....who they are, the person is more likely to behave well when giving feedback. When someone is completely anonymous it sometimes allows certain people to think they have the cover to behave badly.
And that was the behavior Der_ was explaining keeps a lot of higher level players from staying on forums like this.
I think to sum up Carl's post...
WELCOME TO THE INTERNET!