This is so real.

I saw a post going around about how "fanfic authors don't accept critique anymore"

And it's like?

Imagine you bake a batch of cookies and you take it to the office to share with your co-workers.
And then someone just sits down and it's like "Ah, the flavour profile is not quite proper. See, you should have added the brown sugar *after* the flour, and"

And it's like? Just eat the fucking cookie, Mike, and shut the fuck up. lmao

A hobby doesn't need critique. You don't even need to be good at it.
Let people have fun on the internet, for god's sake.

I mean...I definitely did have a coworker who brought in lemon bars that tasted like baking soda and nothing else. And the first time I didn't say anything, just discreetly spit it into a paper towel.

But then he kept bringing baked goods every week, and kept making those sorts of mistakes that made them look fine but taste like bathroom cleanser. And after a few weeks in a row, I did pull him aside and let him know.

A lot of fandoms are small, and when a writer is all over your fandom's tag with fic that has no paragraph breaks and completely forgets characters mid-plot, at some point I think it's fair to tell them, even if you're not their very best friend who they specifically asked for feedback or whatever.

I also kind of hate the fanfic culture of "only positive feedback". It sucked all the fun out of sharing my writing. I always asked for critique, and never actually got anything, and between that and seeing daily posts like this, it had me pretty convinced that any compliments my work did get were false. Just people following the norm of "Leave comments! And kudos! But only say nice things! Comment even when you have nothing to say!"

So I don't want to be spicy here but...

You should just not eat the lemon bars.

If there is a writer all over a tag and you hate how they write, just block them. Put them in Tumblr's filter system. Block them on Ao3. Block them on Twitter.

Stop eating the lemon bars if you don't like them. It's not your job to tell that author they have mistakes if they aren't asking for critique. It's not fair to step into their space and tell them they're doing something wrong when they did not ask for that information. It's rude and unwelcome.

YOU always ask for critique: cool! You can handle critique, that's great! You are verbally consenting to critique. The person whose space you are invading did not consent to that. You are being the jerk when you give unsolicited critique.

The idiom "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" applies here.

Also, another thing, you took your colleague, who you have a genuine IRL relationship with, and you told them how to fix their baking issues, after weeks of eating their baking. Great! Don't do that shit to a complete stranger, though. If I brought some cookies to a barbeque, and I met you there for the first time, and I was NEVER GOING TO SEE YOU AGAIN, and I DIDN'T ASK YOU FOR YOUR OPINIONS ON MY BAKING then I don't want your opinions on my baking. I'd ask my actual friend, who I came to the barbeque with and who's opinion I trust, to tell me how THEY felt about my baking.

Because I would rather that critique from someone who's opinion I trust over some random user name who I don't know at all, and who might just be leading me down the wrong path.