Fic comments and community

I've been seeing a lot of posts here lately about comments/engagement and how writers are entitled or readers are entitled, etc etc etc. I've seen a lot of good points made (and some I don't agree with so much), but I felt compelled to share my experience as someone who has been posting my writing only for nearly two decades and how much the landscape has changed since then.

When I first started posting in 2007, I did so on fandom-specific sites, ff.net and livejournal. I was in my early teens and English is my second language, so lets just say there was a lot of room for improvement. Despite this, during this time I received not just a lot of comments compared to today, but they were usually very lengthy. Constructive criticism and outright negativity were a lot more common back then (speaking not just of my own experience but looking through the comments sections of other writers), but it was also more common for people to just... chat with you in the comments. It seemed to be quietly understood that responding to fics wasn't just about praising the writer but about fostering a sense of community.

I write because I like it, but I post because I want to be part of a community. I am reaching out and it would feel really shitty if no one reached back. I feel like a lot of people who read but don't write miss that; it's not about receiving praise, it's about not feeling like you're shouting into the void.