on reviews

[rhodanum]

Haven't played the game myself (and probably won't until it comes out on PC, since I don't own a PS4) but Death Stranding made me remember something that's always served me well, in fandom and otherwise:

Don't get hung-up on what reviewers say.

Some of the very first reviews I saw for the game were trashing it backwards and forwards (with one reviewer going so far as to imply that game-developers should never be given the creative freedom that Hideo Kojima currently enjoys). And yet, every person in my circle of friends and acquaintances who has gotten to play the game so far, has been more or less raving about different aspects that appealed to them.

There's a very good reason I keep insisting so firmly on the notion of the fundamental subjectivity of art and why I have no patience for certain Big Geek Media types and their obsession with labeling art 'objectively X / Y' ('objectively good' for what they enjoy and what appeals to them, 'objectively bad' for what they don't enjoy and doesn't appeal to them). Meanwhile, I'm sitting there, quietly scoffing and going "there's absolutely nothing objective about you labeling this as 'good' because the tone and the aesthetics happened to be on-point for you." When I say that something is 'good', I judge it so from the point of view of my own subjective perception and personal tastes, rather than any sort of universal litmus test that would never actually be 'universal'. Even when I'm unhappy with something, I also acknowledge that my own individual expectations are in play (for example, I don't expect others to be as critical of She-Ra's storytelling as I am, if 'building believably military operations and a believable military hierarchy' isn't a priority in their own suspension of disbelief).

Which brings me back to reviews and reviewers. My rule of thumb has always been to use reviews as a loose guideline at best and, particularly where video-game reviews are concerned, to focus on those highlighting actual technical issues with a game. I say this because I would have missed out on many things that I dearly loved upon watching or playing, if I had let reviewers' opinions about tone or story or characters influence my own decisions.  
 

Comments

[yvannairie]

Joseph Anderson does have a hardline statement of "subjectivity is implied" attached to his videos -- he actually made a whole video about how subjectivity is implied in his videos -- but in the current timeline we live in, whenever people open with "so this is all just my take on this", it immediately makes me want to listen to them more.

I've railed about how critique has become super commercialised and everyone thinks reviews are just meant to tell you if you should spend money on a thing instead of being their own art form, and while there are many essayists turning the tide, their works aren't really getting the recognition I'd like unless they cross over with "hate entertainment" like takedown videos. It's really telling that "X is Garbage and Here's Why" is the thing people started aping considering the maker of the original "X is Garbage" video also had another video in the format of "X is Genius, and here's why" that is just as well-produced.

[rhodanum]

I've seen this in play even during my time as a journo, where 'attack-pieces' were widely preferred (and were even twisted into such by editors, regardless of what they'd actually been in the beginning). The bluntly-stated rationale in the newsroom (aside for having to appease the interest of whatever oligarch-wannabe was paying our salaries and going after his political rivals) was that these sorts of pieces always provided us with our largest increases in viewer-numbers, something that was actually true. That was a depressing realization right there, that a sure-fire way to keep people glued to the tube is to drip-feed them a diet of outrage and "X is horrid and this is why you should be up in arms about this", because anything else would entail losing them to the competition. I wasn't much involved in the spin (one of the reasons why I preferred the international desk) but even we had to go into the muck, from time to time.

I suspect the same thing is in play as far as "X is Garbage" reviews are concerned. 'Hate-entertainment' is a very good way of putting it and entertainers themselves quickly figure out that it generates a substantial amount of clicks and view, both from outrage and from validation.

[yvannairie]

If you haven't seen Innuendo Studios' "How to Radicalise a Normie", I recommend watching it, like... just in general, but it brings up how hateful spaces use outrage as a way to both stress their viewers out and soothe them, which is what I think the urge to seek out hate entertainment even when it's not good for us comes from -- how anger feels energising and constructive in a way fear and anxiety never can. I feel like that's also why binge press and hate entertainment are so popular, you can keep people in a loop where they feel good for having their anxiety validated while keeping them frothing.

I was talking about it with a friend and how I really cannot stand "getting angry" as entertainment and will drop anything the moment it pisses me off without explaining itself, because for me the whole range of outraged emotions is so unpleasant I will do anything to not feel them. Because anger and heightened emotional arousal narrow the spectrum of emotions we can comprehend in ourselves, it feels galvanising and makes us feel powerful, but if you give it even a moment's thought, you realise that the fear, pain or sorrow that causes it hasn't gone anywhere, and whatever you were going to do wasn't gonna make you feel better except maybe in a cathartic outburst-y kind of way. It's like emotional junk food, if you're deep in apathy, yeah maybe anger is better but really, we should all be aiming a little higher >_>