I always knew my first rant on Newgrounds would be about comments and unfair scores, but I always assumed it would be about my own but I find myself now defending another.

I was approached recently by a 13 year old first time animator. He like a lot of young people find newgrounds and fall in love with the animators here, the big names, and aspire to be like them. There is no harm in that, and if anything I admire them for trying...it sure is better then them just wasting their time doing fuck all.
So instead of just talking about it, this 13 year old learned the basics of flash and spent a few months making his very first animation.
Already I have huge respect for him. At 13 years of age he is actively seeking his dream, that is a incredibly admirable trait.

So he approaches me, and after hearing his story I was more then happy to piece together a song for him, no skin off my nose as I love to compose so why not?
So he finishes his big goal of finishing his first flash, and releases it on the flash portal.

Guys...
It actually semi upset me to see the shitty comments he was getting both on the flash and the endless streams of 0 bombs.
It barely passed judgement, and to be honest, its not a bad first flash.
It surpasses a lot of the stuff that comes in the spam section, it was decent length, well animated for a first timer AND a 13 year old.

Regardless, its not cool.
This shit happens enough on the audio portal daily and maybe I'm blind to the animation portal due to my bias towards audio, but I honestly didn't believe the shit we deal with on the audio side is worst on the Animation side.
Guess I'm a sucker for thinking the Animation side was full of decent people helping one another out, and we just got stuck with all the 0 bombs over the Audio side of things.

If you like a flash or song, comment, tell the artist, it goes a loooooong way. Trust me.
If you think its ok, leave some feedback! People love to get feedback! You don't need to slam them down and call them shit, you can just leave some constructive criticism.

In my opinion nothing ever deserves a 0.
Even spam intended to cause harm gets a 0.5 in my book for going through the effort to make the damn thing!

There is never a excuse to blindly bomb someone.
Grow up.

You think dropping peoples stuff will boost your stuff to the top?
Think again.

If you try to make a name for yourself here by destroying others chances with reckless 0's, then I guarantee you, you will meet a similar fate.

/rant.