I Deleted My Reddit Post Because the Comments Hurt. I Won't Do That Again.
Published: December 7, 2025 | 7 min read
Let me tell you a story.
On the night of Wednesday last week, I decided to share version 1 of the French Writing Playground for the first time on Reddit. I've worked on a number of apps and I haven't really shared any of them with anyone. I guess that night I was feeling bored and was also getting tired of seeing just my own entries on it. So I did it. I created a Reddit post and shared it across three language-related subreddits.
Do you want to know the first comment I got?
The First Comment
This is what it said, word for word:
"It's almost like lebonpatron.com and Antidode haven't existed for 'decades'".
Do you want to know my reaction when I read that? Well, I was sad. More specifically, I probably made one of those sad faces to myself, the type one makes when they're about to cry. Someone read my post about the app I built and immediately pointed out that it was irrelevant because lebonpatron.com and Antidode already exist (I hadn't heard of them before now and I still haven't looked them up yet).
I remained sad for a while and then headed back to the French Writing Playground to try to express how I felt about that comment in French. Then behold my surprise: about five new entries from people that I did not know. I smiled. I was happy.
Then I clicked on some of the entries and boom, some of those entries had triggered errors that none of mine had triggered. I found myself debugging the app when I should have been sleeping. This debugging process led me to make the decision to get rid of Make entirely from the application's workflow, as there were issues that I could simply avoid totally by doing that. I had mentioned in previous blog posts that Make was not exactly necessary and potentially adds unnecessary overhead to the app, so it's good that I finally got rid of it.
The Entry That Stung
Now here's something else that happened. Later that night, I saw there was another entry.
The entry was: 'Cette app soffez dernier il est just chatGPT avec une HTML couverte et le homme que le faire pense qui il est tres inteligent.'
My application corrected it to: 'Cette app, sauf erreur, dernierement c'est juste ChatGPT avec une interface HTML par-dessus et l'homme qui l'a fait pense qu'il est tres intelligent.'
The translation in English: 'This app, unless I'm mistaken, lately it's just ChatGPT with an HTML interface on top and the man who made it thinks he's very smart.'
The alias used by the person who submitted the entry: 'Fuck this'
Well first, just a clarification: I am not a man.
Now on a more serious note, I had to acknowledge that that entry made me sad. I contemplated deleting it so that no one would ever see it. But I didn't, so you will see it if you visit the app and search. The app is not just ChatGPT with an HTML interface (it was built with Next.js), but anyways, that is not the point.
The point is how it made me feel. The real pressure of having other people look at the work that you put time and thought into, and then making it seem like it has no real value.
The Good Comments
I did get a good comment on Reddit though. This is what it said, word for word:
"I'm not familiar with Antidode as mentioned in the other comment, but I tried this out and I thought it was much stronger than lebonpatron. I'm about B1 level, and it did a very good job of identifying and explaining the errors I made. Great job with this!"
There was also another positive comment with constructive feedback:
"Very cool, I like this a lot. The only problem I have with it is the background animations and sounds. All super distracting. Would love to see a clean version of this. Dark theme."
This last comment raised a very valid point. Classic Prisca to build an application that is animated to the point that it is distracting. It revealed a major flaw in my thinking when it comes to User Experience. Some people, the ones who are crazy like me, might enjoy the animations and sounds and multiple colors of the app. However, it's also important to account for people who just want a space to learn and finds the additional elements distracting.
Why I Deleted the Posts
After some thought, I decided to delete the posts across the different subreddits for two major reasons:
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The feedback was pulling me away from other work. It was distracting at the time as I wanted to work on something else. I did apply functional fixes to prevent the errors that were causing the entries to not be evaluated properly and also muted the application sounds by default. However, the possible implementation of a more stable light and dark theme might have to wait for a while.
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I could not handle the negative comments at the time. It made me sadder than I am even comfortable admitting.
However, here is the good news. The story has changed.
When Your Bank Account Puts Things in Perspective
Let me tell you a second story.
So you know that very soon I will be moving into an unfurnished place in Montreal. This means that I have to start thinking about furniture, but nothing crazy, just the absolute basic things I need: a bed, a table, and a chair. I started looking at the prices online and my heart started pounding rapidly. The money I will have to spend to get these items, nothing sophisticated, just good enough that I am able to remain productive until I get my ducks in a row, gave me anxiety. This is especially because I recently had to get a new laptop given the death of my Dell XPS 13.
Now you might be saying in your head, go to Facebook Marketplace, you'll find cheap or free items there. Let me set the stage for you. I am moving to a city where I know absolutely no one. That city is Montreal with a notoriously horrible winter. I will have no one to call to help me carry stuff, drive me to whatever location I have to pick up whatever random furniture I find on Facebook Marketplace. Not to even mention the amount of work and searching it would take to find good items, which I simply do not have. Do you see the volume of work I am doing on this website? How am I supposed to make time for that?
These are the thoughts that are going on in my head. I've added the items to my cart in the cheapest place I can find them right now, but I am silently hoping some miracle happens before I am forced to hit the purchase button.
The Shift
But this is where the story gets interesting.
You know I mentioned earlier that the negative comments made me sad. Well, my bank account is running an active race down to zero. There is no more room to be sad.
I sometimes think to myself that I am soft, kind of weak at heart, easy to break with words. Well, I am laughing to myself as I write this because NO. Absolutely not! As my bank account wails louder and louder, I am not going to tell myself things like that, things that would only prevent me from sharing my work simply because I am afraid of criticism.
Once again, I think something has shifted in my head. Now I understand that when my SDR Era ends, which is in 6 days by the way, I will have to ruthlessly and shamelessly promote myself and my work.
No more "she's soft." Now, I tell myself that I am crazy and obsessed with my work, that I think everyone deserves a chance to see the things I have built. And I plan to respectfully and relentlessly make sure that they see it.
I Will Promote It Anyways
Would I have people point out better applications that already exist? Yes, but I am going to share mine anyways.
Would I have people tell me that I am not that smart? Yes, I already know that, but I will share it anyways.
Would I have people point out flaws in my reasoning for my case studies or in my writing style? Yes, I will promote it anyways.
Would people mock my French skills, especially for the videos I have created? Yes, I will promote it anyways.
Would people tell me that the names I came up with for terms like LLM Instance Cloning have some more "official" name? Yes, I will keep calling it what I named it, and I will promote it anyways.
This list could be endless. At the end of the day, I sometimes am my own worst critic. But I'll stop here for now.
The Ego Check
One final thought.
I have had to reflect these past few days on why I may have felt sad seeing those negative comments, and I think it is an ego thing. The main point of the negative comments and constructive feedback is simply: "Prisca, you are not as smart as you think you are."
Now first, I genuinely do not think I am that smart. If I used to think I was smart, a combination of learning French, learning DaVinci Resolve, learning more and more new things about AI, as well as all the new things I am learning from the battle against chauffeur knowledge series has shown me that I am not that smart. Every day I see that there is so, so much more that I do not know.
But I guess it hurts more when others point it out, doesn't it?
Why I Write
One of the main reasons I write is that it helps me think better. If I can't express my thoughts with words on paper or while typing, that only shows that there are gaps in my thoughts that need to be filled. Writing makes me smarter while at the same time makes me feel dumb when I find myself digging deeper to understand complex ideas to be able to express them with my own words.
The Hall of Shame
I have decided to build a system to help me proactively manage future negative comments or constructive feedback. This should help me not take things too personally and ultimately, should keep me humble.
Now what is the system, you might ask? Well, I just had the idea on my afternoon walk. I am going to create an app. I might call it the "Hall of Shame" or something along those lines.
As I receive both negative and constructive feedback on the work I have done once I begin sharing, I will add them to this app and track them, especially the constructive feedback. I don't know where all the work I am doing on this site would ultimately lead to, but the Hall of Shame application will always be there to keep me humble, learning, growing, and challenging myself.
That way, for however long I am alive, I will always have something I am actively working on. And the entries on that site will be inspired by the very ones who criticize me.
I won't be adding this app to my projects page, but anyone who reads this post should be able to see it here when it's ready.
As always, thanks for reading!