Have you ever received unfairly harsh criticism?

Yes. Unfair criticism is quite common. Since I was a child I have been taught that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never break me". You don't get what that phrase means until you grow up.

I have also been in dark places through my life almost dying several times. Each of them taught me that you can't really worry about what other people say about you and there is no point.

After my most valuable friend died I learned life is short and you should live each day like the last.

Considering how we only live once there is no point wasting our lives worrying about what others say about us.

I know it is easier said than done and you sound young so you have a long way to go in life.
Just don't let it get to you.
Remember words can't hurt us. Humans give words their meanings. Think about it this way if a person insults you in a language you don't know you won't care.
It is until you give those words meaning that the words start to affect you.

If you are ever down don't forget to rely on your loved ones.

Unsolicited criticism always sucks imo.
Beside that all critcism I received was the objective truth from their perspective
and most of the time from my perspective too. I always try to work with critique
and use it to get better.

When I was 16 I received unsolicited criticism which I still think about today sometimes:
"Hey, aren´t you the guy who always draws the comic characters with the too short legs?"
Good thing was that he knew my comic characters and I never met that guy in my life and
he was also right, the legs of my characters were ridiciously short, I didn´t think about it at all
and they looked fine to me. I started to learn about anatomy 24 years later and remembered
the comment. That also showed me that stuff like that has impact on people and taught me
to be more careful and never give critique to someone who doesn´t ask for it.

The harshest criticism is when the people don´t care at all

My little brother never said anything nice about my work lol I would be excited to show him my new piece and the first thing he would say is criticism. Most of the time is him being mean not bothering to give actual constructive criticism. I stopped asking for his opinion to save my self esteem

There are a lot of negative people out there who do this for a reason we don´t understand.
Energy vampires

There are a few different types of criticism I see online.

There’s good constructive criticism by people who genuinely want to teach, which is actually helpful.

There’s constructive criticism by someone who has zero interpersonal skills and delivers the feedback harshly (which hurts, but can still be helpful).

Then there are the trolls. The haters who have issues in their own lives and cast it out onto others under the veil of internet anonymity. These are the worst and although we know their “criticism” is invalid (they are easy to spot), it still hurts. A lot. A few years back I was making a little comic by taking screenshots of a game and adding speech bubbles, extra story to it. It was really fun to make because I was playing a game and making a comic of it at the same time! I posted it to the game’s subreddit and someone commented on multiple posts saying whoever made it had to be retarded. Literally lost years of self confidence, even though I knew it was a troll, stopped making the thing. (The good news is I stopped wasting my time with that and started writing again, so… silver linings and all..)

If there are repeated negative comments treat them as a troll and ignore them. If they have anything valuable to say you can get that same information from another source without crushing your heart. Often, if we convince ourselves that one thing they said if valid… then our minds trick themselves into thinking “we’ll maybe other things they said are true too” and that’s just not worth the psychological damage.

Yeah, it's unfortunate. Sometimes people just want to get the last word in too... Sadly, often the best thing we can do in these scenarios as creators is just say "thank you for the feedback" or not reply at all and leave no room for further discourse. If they are continuously commenting negative things even after that... then that's getting into troll territory (even if they aren't doing it on purpose) if you ask me, especially if they are repeating the same feedback.

I still remember that one time when an artist I really respected and thought to be my kinda sorta online friend told me, with this kind, i-want-the-best-for-you, caring framing:

"I'm sorry, but your drawings are just not pleasant to look at. I think you should just stop drawing. It's for the best."

And I mean, sure, I was a little kid (so were they) and my skill was indeed lacking, but... I did stop drawing for like a year after that. Stopped trying for even longer.

And it's this haunting frigging memory that pops up in my mind every time when I start feeling insecure due to lack of response or whatever. My brain is like "Well yeah, this is 'cause you're still drawing what's unpleasant to look at, what do you expect!"

But most of the time, like with the majority of negative things that's been told to me and got stuck in my mind, I turn it into spite. Pleasant or not, it's mine and I personally like it. Suck on that, self-doubt.

(that attitude makes me very hostile to actual constructive critisism now, however. That's... a bit of a problem)

I usually just keep quiet when I get insults thrown on that because yeah, I know how much my skills measure up to (which...is not a lot). Still, I have had some "friends" try to bully me because of my grammatical mistakes before. It didn't feel good, and I definitely thought they could word their comments better
Honestly, understanding yourself is the most important thing. The best advice you can receive is mostly from yourself and some "real critics", not some inexperienced idiots.
So, what I'd say on this topic is to not to take all your feedback with the same degree of concern. If you get holed up and hung up on a single imperfection, then you'll end up stuck for a long time instead of improving.
To improve yourself, you need a open attitude and some mental fortitude.
For me, I take insults to the face because I won't let anyone just undermine my confidence. Maybe that's a good thing, but I think it really helps me with thinking about the whole picture when piecing together feedback I receive

I've never had someone critique my works in a harsh manner before, so I can't really say anything else except maybe people compliment me too much? It's a cycle I can't get out of because people want to stroke my ego to get free works, I guess. It got me into a depressive state every time someone compliments my works whether it's genuine or not. Not that I'm looking for critiques either, it's just a weird experience I have time and time again. Maybe I just post too much fanarts or maybe I am good, I don't know.

But I have been studying other people's works more and been really comparing my older works that people "compliment" and really test the limit of how bad I was during that time. It's a lot of mental cartwheel but it pays off in the end, I think if someone were to critique my works now I wouldn't be mad because I am aware I will always improve.

Honestly... no. Uh, I've never had unfair harsh criticism, but just kinda bad criticism. Nothing too mean.

Oh yeah. In college, my favorite animation teacher (who I made the mistake of fanboying over because he was a second-generation Disney animator) took a riotous dump on my final project. There were absolutely some good points, but a lot of unwarranted personal boas was sprinkled in there too. It was a real kick in the pants as I was on the way out the door and just about to enter the labor force and the big-a** scary world.

And words can hurt. And that's okay. Thankfully I was strong enough at the time to put it all in perspective and separate the good points from the bad, but I still couldn't help it from letting his unfair points overshadow my mood (and self worth) until I got enough distance from it all. It sucks that a kind word rolls off me but a negative word sticks in. Survival mechanisms can be cruel.

But when I can, I try to take criticisms as growth opportunities. The legit criticisms I use to grow my art, the illegitimate criticisms to grow a tougher skin and become a more empathic person (and hopefully become a better friend or mentor). Growth is uncomfortable (both physically and emotionally), and I try to give myself the time and space to validate my feelings until that particular work on myself feels resolved (for the time being, at least).

Also, thanks for opening this conversation up. I really enjoy these types of threads and am so happy to see everyone's journey.

Many times but dealing with the ego blow isn't nearly as difficult as resisting the urge to clapback at them.

Two that stick out in my mind.

The first was about my art. I don't have a lot of disposable income so I learned to make my covers and promo images on Canva. I do good work and am happy with what I've made. I had a former friend that I met online in the forum whom I thought I could trust to give it to me straight. Every image I showed her her reaction was always very "Good job, sweetie". No ego stroking that we all pretty much are low key asking for when we show off our work.

She then started to repeatedly tell me that my work was too "vague". My main series, The Museum, was written to be in the same vein as Warehouse 13 and The Librarians. However there are a lot of other movies/series that focus around a magic artifact that could change the course of history. Every image I picked never seemed to convey the message. I digitally painted a pair of high heeled shoes in a pool of blood for a story about a murderous Cinderella - she shamed me for doing high heels and a fairytale retelling. She then sent me a ton of unasked for pictures of historic shoes and feeding me ideas of "better" plots if I had to do a story about shoes.

Her criticism felt unfairly harsh because she refused to read my work. All she knew of it was what I had told her in our conversations. The rest was speculation on her part. Even comparing me to her artist felt rough because her artist is a professional comic artist who takes commissions on the side. But she talks about her like she's her own personal artist that she keeps on private retainer.

After all that backstory, the other was just a bad review. The reader was making assumptions on my work based on the summary and first few chapters and called my work derivative. That hurt.

Most of the criticism I have received has been pretty mild, any big writing flaws in my stories weren't brought to my attention and I only realized them after the fact. There "your hand lettering is bad" which it was, and "this font choice sucks" which was true, and then there's "I saw a few spelling words, or is it done intentionally?" Which I think means I'm bad at spelling, which I am, but how ironic is it that someone telling me I'm bad at spelling said it like this?

If you're wondering, my big writing mistake that no-one pointed out to me was for this daily comic I did during the first covid lockdown, it was about this social hermit giving advise about surviving lockdown while going insane. The big writing flaw was that the main character was Biracial, his nice, dead mom was white, his emotionally cold father was black, his estranged boyfriend was black and the supernatural entity that showed up in his hallucinations to help him out of his terrible mental health was a self insert of me and therefore white.
It isn't super great that all the white characters were helpful figures in the MCs life while all the black characters failed the MC in some way, If I could go back I would show that the mom probably instilled the MCs hermit tendency and re-inforced their social anxiety, and I'd make my supernatural hallucination more of an entity than a defined person. That way everyone failed the MC, not just the black characters.
It's not surprising no-one pointed it out, my audience then was just schoolmates and family and thus, also white and even then my hand lettering was so garbage no-one could actually read it. Its important to examine your biases, I think that comics should be diverse, but that you should be concious about who is diverse in your comic. Lest you do something stupid, like me.

When I was in grade five, one day I drew (or maybe just colored) a bird, and I remember being told by my teacher that the colors I used (red and blue) didn't go together. I don't think I said anything, but in my memory I must have had a strange look on my face, because if I am able to keep my mouth shut, keeping my thoughts off my face is a skill I still don't have. I wasn't hurt by that criticism at all: owing to an immense stubbornness and the inability to conform to anyone's expectations, I shrugged it off and kept right on coloring. I was somehow quite confident in the understanding that my teacher's opinion about color compatibility did not make sense, and wouldn't have mattered if it had.

I remember also being told in sixth grade that I “needed to get a life” by a classmate because I showed him my comics at the time. I haven't had much opportunity for real criticism, though I appreciate an honest critique, especially if it is backed up with specifics. When I do receive negative feedback I usually consider it fairly dispassionately: I am always looking to improve myself as an artist, so I welcome an outside perspective. If it is a helpful and constructive critique it may affect my artistic choices. Even if I disagree with the premise of the critique, it is still useful because it forces me to examine those choices, and strengthens my rationale for making them. Because of the experimental nature of my work I take a very fluid approach to technique and hold my vision loosely, allowing the drawing to lead me. I'm very adaptable in that regard: perhaps a bit too much, so criticism is helpful in that it brings a more conscious awareness to those instinctive choices. I feel I need this to grow as an artist: now that I've spent 17 years developing some level of technical mastery in my medium, I find myself more mindful of philosophical and aesthetic concerns.

Praise is often much harder to handle, though I have learned to accept it graciously: I can't stand false modesty. I find the concept of talent quite problematic. In the end it is just someone's opinion, and it gets in the way in terms of expectations. When I am at my most inspired I always have a profound sense that the work is coming through me, more than originating within me. It is easier to separate myself from my art when it comes to criticism, but praise comes with the pressure to live up to the hype, and ego definitely gets in the way when trying to establish that creative connection and get my head in the zone where art lives.

Criticism is helpful if genuine, and admiration for my work can give much-needed encouragement. The only feedback I can't stand is indifference: the casual dismissal or the tepid “How nice.” Art is meant to cause a reaction: even if it is negative, it has made the viewer think about why, and that's a good thing.