Jealousy

To know you're good at something, watch for jealousy, not praise.

Jealousy is visceral. It requires no thought or consideration. Some people instinctually clench upon observing someone doing well. The glandular system doesn't lie!

It's all well and good if you can delight in the miserable tightness you've provoked. People who do things to gain notoriety (most singers don't start out wanting to sing; they start out wanting to be singers) are comfortable with this bundle of reactions: seeming elevation, punctuated by the pained snarls of the seeming Defeated.

Karma yogis, who do things well merely to do things well and not to be recognized as That Person Who Does Things Well (or, worse, as That Person Who Does Things Well Merely To Do Things Well), are terribly confused by jealousy. "Wait," we think, "I wanted to delight them! Why are they so unhappy?"

Praise, by contrast, is entirely unreliable. People have a wide range of reasons for offering praise which have nothing to do with the quality of the thing they're praising. Praise that's both genuine and savvy is extremely rare, because the savvy are occupied with drumming up praise for their own activities in their savvy realm. They're not here for you.

We mostly praise the oft-praised. It's all incubated in a mindless echo chamber - even authoritative praise. For example, while journalism is supposed to be a taste-making medium, it's the antithesis. To garner press attention, you need to have received press attention. It operates in the same flocking manner as ad-hoc praise. (For a visceral sense of how journalists flock and echo, check out some of the early press from Chowhound, which reads like it came out of the same typewriter.)

Anointment is an illusion. We falsely assume some meritocratic process deliberately elevates cream, despite the scarcity of cream amid the frantic elevation. If it worked that way, I wouldn't have spent a decade cajoling people to seek out and evangelize great stuff. Such efforts are counter to the normal way of things, like salmon swimming up-river. Chowhound's now a distant memory, and even those who remember it fondly seem happy taking cues from the greased chutes of manufactured conventional wisdom, aka trendiness. Flocking and echoing are a horrendously cheap substitute for active discernment.

Once the crowd cheers, the press follows the crowd. You're covered not because you deserve it, but because you're an on-radar phenomenon, and press reports the radar. This is why recognition goes to the recognized. By the time you receive it, you won't particularly need it.

It is no one's job to tell people about people doing great things, including the people whose job it is to tell people about people doing great things. And individuals aren't generous enough - nonconformist enough - to clear their throats and speak up, amid silence, to announce their appreciation. And those savvy enough to fully recognize quality are busy with oppressive slogs of their own.

It's a booting paradox. Starting a computer is a tricky wicket because it requires computation, and if the computer's not yet started....well, you see the issue. One "boots" a computer because the process is akin to pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps.

So...long before you've bootstrapped your way to praise (like training a parrot!), while remaining at the point where people enjoy what you do but can't find the generosity to tell you they're enjoying it, and no critical mass of nonconformists has broken the silence to spark a praise cycle, the odd grinding noise will come from jealous people - your only reliable confirmation - grinding their molars, if not their knives.