Nitpicking = bullying?

So you just finished a 300-words essay. You checked and double-checked for any errors and your references are sound. You showed it to someone or made it public. In an instant, there will be something like this:

This writer may or may not made up this picture for example purpose.

Of course, that is to be expected. With the anonymity of the Internet, people are free to voice their 'opinion', sometimes for their own amusement. You, as the writer, should just ignore them. However, there are also comments like this:

via Cracked.com. This writer did not wrote this.

 That's from a scientific article. The writer has spent dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of fact-checking and editing to come up with a solid, readable article, yet at least one person will come up and comment on every single thing that the writer got it wrong, just to feel all 'high-and-mighty' and to show he is smarter than the writer. That is nitpicking.

Not this one, silly. The OTHER nitpicking.

Nitpicking is defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary as "minute and usually unjustified criticism", as seen above. It is usually done by someone who may or may not be more academically educated than the writer, and it can make the writer feels stupid and insecure. Thus, nitpicking, in this context, is for intents and purposes, bullying.


Nitpicking, or sometimes also called educational bullying, is not confined totally to the abyss that is the Internet. Take the example of a student who laboriously made a paperwork, all by himself, and pass it up to his lecturer. The lecturer, being a lecturer, proceeds to point out every single mistakes the student made, reducing the student to tears. The student feels bullied.


Take note that it is not the lecturer's intention at all to make the student feels that way. He is, first and foremost, doing his job to criticise and point out the mistakes of his students. Yet, being a form of non-malign bullying, he unintentionally bullied the student. The student was defenseless; desperation overtook him, leading to tears.


This writer does not mean that nitpicking is totally bad, per se. Mistakes are mistakes, and it should be corrected. What this writer cannot agree about is it's method - the delivery, if you will. The lecturer only wanted to do his job, which is correcting his students. But how about those that intended to nitpick? Why do they do so?

According to psychologist Alfred Adler, it is due to superiority complex (Adler, 1938). Specifically, the nitpicker has the desire to show that he is superior to the writer in terms of knowledge, and he shows this by nitpicking. By doing so, he reinforce the belief that, "Hey, I just showed that your writings are full of holes and that makes you an idiot and I AM SO SMART LOOK AT ME".


So what can we do about it?


The best solution is: nothing.


The utmost desire of a nitpicker is attention. He derives it from the misery of the writer, just like a bully. By giving him what he wants, he will not stop and continue his nitpicking ways. So, even though he, like the one in the second picture, seems to be smarter than the I-insult-your-mother commenter in the first picture, they are the same, actually. Nothing.


By: MUHAMMAD NURUDDIN BIN WAN MOHD GHAZALLI A132131


References: Adler, A. (1964). Superiority and Social Interest: A Collection of Later Writings. H. L. Ansbacher and R. R. Ansbacher (Eds.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.