Critics are getting less cruel. Alas
economist.com
economist.com
"art criticism, the analysis and evaluation of works of art. More subtly, art criticism is often tied to theory; it is interpretive, involving the effort to understand a particular work of art from a theoretical perspective and to establish its significance in the history of art."
https://www.britannica.com/art/art-criticism
I was reminded of this when I watched a video on video games criticism with my son and he didn't understand how that was criticism.
REM: 'Literary life rarely offers splendid spectacles' (ducks)
A lot of people don't understand critics. They assume it means to judge and determine...
..and you may think 'yes that may be about censorship'
> Won't sound offending but 'idiocracy' is much more subtile, and left criticism tied to theory, interpreting, and ('shure' ^^) without involving any effort or understanding?
?!
> And the moral is about: "Some people better insert their gold-coins their throat down, to not hand it out to thieves, burglarzz and criminals."?
[dice-roll] P-:
(ETA: It gets worse too, because then you get companies gaming these meta-metrics and reviewers that feel uncomfortable giving scores below certain thresholds for fear of their jobs or other punishments, so even the truthfulness of individual reviews starts to be questioned how much they are just doing for "the algorithm".)
I despise hatchet jobs. They may not be as common in literary reviews any more, but they absolutely have taken over most popular internet media. Youtube is full of dunk reviews of absolutely everything, dripping with sarcasm and often targeted at anything even remotely unconventional or provocative.
I can't remember who said it but I took the advice to only listen to critics who lead you to something, not away from it. For one it is more actionable and useful to get advice on what to read rather than what not to read, and also scathing criticism is often more about the reviewer than it is about the subject they're writing on.
There are too many people who style themselves reviewers who cannot tell the difference between something not being for them, and something being actually objectively bad.
How would you even define "objectively bad" when it comes to art?
I also consider the all knowing character very popular in webtoons to be just a form of cheating. I've seen it done well, e.g. knowledge as a double-edged sword, but mostly poorly to the point it could have been removed and the story would have been the same. In general adding superflous elements because it is trendy is really shallow writing.
There are two movies out today that are famously doing very well and are quite good.
> They ignore the source material to make it fit their political agenda
It's one thing to use "thought terminating cliches" in posts, but actually believing them is nothing more than self-harm, so you should try stopping.
of course "bad art" is a ridiculopus concept in some sense, but I think here the issue is a total lack of "art", an entirely cynical attempt to hit the exact average with no ideas behind it
I guess it was like movie reviews from back in the day, you’d find a reviewer that matched your preferences.
hate and outrage generate a lot of clicks, it makes sense (sadly) that people would tend towards it given the profitability.
Everything becomes the upside down parody when we suffer those who prefer to preserve polite righteousness over hard and unpleasant reality.
Some things just suck, and should be said to suck. Coolidge said it best, “ If we judge ourselves only by our aspirations and everyone else only by their conduct, we shall soon reach a very false conclusion.”
We certainly weren't taught any of that in our Latin classes at school!
don't nationalise the current industry or outlaw them in any way, just create competition that doesn't have to focus on profit
people may hate the idea of public ownership, but what is the alternative? ownership by Murdoch and a handful of billionaires, corporate funded and staffed by people only in it for the paycheck
Anything non-political, sure, they're pretty good. Unfortunately, on politics, they're (currently and for the last 10-ish years) far too lenient on, chummy with, and subservient to the Tories to justify the licence fee.
It is not, obviously, but it is something that shouldn't be happening at the allegedly impartial news flagship that everyone is forced to pay for.
Looking at the sorry state of science funding (public grants that reward mediocre projects from established teams and publish-or-perish mentality), I think the result would be the same ossified structure with massive power concentrated in a few hands. Perhaps a lot of output, but not much quality.
At the same time, most Western governments fight against the unstoppable juggernaut of aging societies. We will have serious problems financing healthcare and social care in a decade or two, depending on the precise shape of the demographic curve in your country. As a result, I think the opposite will take place: privatization of more and more services in an attempt to wean them off subsidies and get them to self-support somehow.
We can already see the growing power of the "grey voting bloc" here in Czechia. Having a public pension system (yet another idea that Americans may find appealing), more and more efforts of the politicians go towards appeasing interests of the pensioners at the cost of everything and everyone else. Doing anything else is a recipe for electoral wipeout.
Of course, murdering review scores is an extreme solution and also probably an impossible feat. Too many businesses are built upon the illusion of aggregate review scores as "objectively" good things (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, Yelp, Amazon, AirBNB, Uber, and on and on and on). But we can still dream the impossible dream that more people wake up to how rotten these statistics are below the surface and it eventually becomes a cultural mandate to stop using bad metrics for cultural homogenization.
So what point do critics serve?
The only critics whose work I enjoy are either a) enjoyers of the same genres and pieces I enjoy, and who compile vicious and humorous snipes at pieces I do not, or b) who don't tell me why I should love or hate a piece, but instead explain the critical elements I may not understand or might have missed without judgement. And, out of these two types, the impact of team b) lasts much longer.
Mostly though, I can’t watch every movie or eat at every restaurant so I need recommendation data.
You've answered your own question.
> [critics] who don't tell me why I should love or hate a piece, but instead explain the critical elements I may not understand or might have missed without judgement.
Someone who is just saying "good/bad/yay/nay" on a piece of art isn't a critic, I'd suggest, but just an opinion-haver. Being a "critic" requires some level of thoughtful critique.