A cool interaction with a user of random anime

If you don’t already know, I run a niche site called randomanime.org. It’s a small site that helps people find new anime to watch. I’ve had it for years now; since late 2015.

Over the years, I’ve had some interesting interactions with users. Some good, some bad and some downright hilarious. For the most part, users will fill out the form on the site to reach out to me. Other times they’ll add me on MAL and talk to me there. The emails come in a wide variety, since I allow for anonymity. It can be anything from helpful feedback to telling me to go die. You know, it’s the internet.

One particular interaction stood out to me recently. It was a few months ago now, but the message went as follows:

Good afternoon, so basically me and my friends use this site to do an “anime draft” where we use numbers in accordance to the numbers on this site and basically I would use my auto clicker to get to the thousands in order to get to the number drafted it used to just be a still button but now it has changed to a button on the anime banner which moves in which makes it take many minutes to get through all the animes, I ask for you to change it back to the old button or make it so the button isn’t on the banner so it doesn’t move it means a lot to me and my friends I would really appreciate it thank you!

Pretty cool message, right?

First of all, I never imagined someone using the site in the way this user is. An anime draft? Sounds baller. Secondly, this person has used the site frequently enough to have gone through the various UI changes that I’ve rolled out over the years. Not just a one-off, pretty cool.

Of course, I wanted to help. I replied to the message asking for clarification. Two weeks later, I pushed an update to the site introducing “site settings” which allowed users to toggle animations for the site as a whole. Honestly, a good overall feature to have.

Their reply had me smiling:

I appreciate you SOOOOO much this works PERFECTLY this is exactly what i wanted me and my friends are ecstatic be prepared to see me in your patreon!!!!!

Awesome, isn’t it? Some random person out in the world not only used my site, but cared enough about the experience to reach out to me about it. They offered good, valid feedback that I was able to build upon. I was able to understand their need and build upon it to help not only them, but every user of the site.

I’ll take 1000 “eat shit” emails just for one of these. It’s truly amazing and makes me proud to have created something useful to others.

That’s all. I wanted to share this experience because it made me so damn happy.