Do fans need to listen to criticism?

[00:00:04]Hey nerds, what's up? So, there are a few topics that have been floating around in my head for the last few weeks that didn't really coalesce into a single topic until after recently when I watched a video by one of my favorite creators, Jenny Nicholson. Now, I've been following Jenny for over a decade and while she's been a big and popular creator for a while now, she got really thrown into the spotlight with her video about Disney's Star Wars hotel. This 4-hour video, which has garnered 16 million views, showcased everything I've always loved about Jenny's videos and why I have followed her for so long.

[00:00:35]Intensely researched, enthusiastic, but with pinpoint precise and perceptive criticism delivered with an incredibly sharp and entertaining wit. This felt like criticism at its best.

[00:00:46]Knowledgeable and insightful with a bit of sharpness, but not enough to make it feel outright mean or over the top. So, imagine my surprise when in a recent Patreon video, Jenny revealed that fans of the hotel had made badges mocking and deriding her at a recent con celebrating the hotel. As it's a Patreon video, I won't be sharing clips for obvious reasons, but let's just say I was floored. It just felt so icky. Like, what do you mean people aren't allowed to criticize at all the thing that you love? And it made me think a little bit deeper about how we as fans deal with criticism within the book community.

[00:01:21]What responsibility do those meeting out the criticism have and what responsibility do the fans have to engage with that criticism?

[00:01:28]Distinguishing good faith criticism from bad faith criticism is a vital skill and I feel like on the internet at least, we've lost the plot a little bit. The minute we start lumping together all criticism and immediately assuming it's all bad because it criticizes something is the minute we decide that we accept mediocrity and lose critical thinking.

[00:01:49]There's a reason the term constructive criticism exists. No great work of literature was published without an editor. I actually probably shouldn't say that because I'm sure I'll get well actually and there are some there's something out there but in general in general the point stands most things have to be edited. One of the biggest indicators of good faith criticism to me is the idea of is the call coming from inside the house? Now, I know that's not how that phrase is supposed to be used but bear with me for a second. A few years ago a Wired article about Brandon Sanderson made huge waves in the community. It was widely criticized not only by fans but even by people who consider themselves decidedly not fans of Sanderson. Seen as petty, the author made assumptions and got facts wrong and clearly had made up his opinion on Sanderson and the fandom before even starting the interview. It read like those documentaries that exist just to mock the participants so that viewers can all laugh at the weirdos together. It was written in a way to uplift the author of the piece and thus presumably the readers who are in the right as superior and everyone otherwise engaging with the topic as lesser.

[00:02:53]Compare this to Jenny's criticism of the Star Cruiser Hotel. Jenny is a known theme park enthusiast. She had been following the creation of the hotel since its inception. She showed up to the hotel having spent her own money to be there, costume with an original character in mind. She was a full willing enthusiastic participant. And then she went and had a bad time and wrote a critical review. The call was coming from inside the house. She was already a part of the community and already liked the properties and ideas around the things that she was criticizing. It is natural to want to take a critical eye to criticism that may seemingly come in bad faith from those who seem completely unwilling to engage in the communities they're criticizing. And it can feel especially bad when you are a part of a community or genre that you already feel like gets a lack of respect and is misunderstood.

[00:03:47]You get tired of not being taken seriously and snubbed by people who love so-called literature. But, I feel like we've kind of started to move into a place where we take all criticism in this way, rather than being able to distinguish those who come from the outside in a way that is not understanding versus actual fans and people within the community. Now, there are a couple of factors that I think may play into this from both sides. On the side of us maybe being a little bit more gun-shy about criticism, may come from the rise and incredible success of rage bait content across different platforms.

[00:04:24]And on the other side of this coin, where I feel like we need to make sure we get criticism, is the rise of star rating inflation. Let's start with the internet and angry content. As a hypothetical, if Jenny had gone to the Star Wars hotel and loved it, had a fabulous time, would her review have done as well? Now, I'm sure it would have done well regardless. She's a very popular creator, and it was a very popular topic.

[00:04:49]But, if I'm being honest, it probably wouldn't have. Now, that's not a reflection on the video. I've already stated multiple times that I think nobody does criticism better than Jenny.

[00:04:58]I think it's a fantastic video. But, I do think it might be illustrative of a point of the internet, which is that anger and rage do sell. And I do use the term rage because generally the things that get the most popular aren't always even killed criticisms of something, but rather over-the-top things meant to draw people in and meant to get them to engage. Because all engagement is the same to the algorithm. It treats it the same. All engagement on the internet is good engagement. And I feel like that's trickled down to content that's not even rage per se. I would say in general, people are way more interested in a one-star review than a three-star review. What's the cause of this? Is it the rise of snark spaces on the internet that start fun, but seem to infect thinking until everything is aggression?

[00:05:43]Could also likely be spurred by the anonymity of the internet, of course, where generally the natural laws of social interactions seem to be completely forgotten and people act in ways they would never act in real life.

[00:05:58]I think this has led to a weird dichotomy on the internet where we are both seeking for criticism and also exhausted by criticism because it seems infused in absolutely every space all the time. Let's put a pin in this. We're going to come back to it. The answer, of course, is not to just be relentlessly positive about absolutely everything.

[00:06:19]We can't go to the other extreme to combat it, unfortunately. It's been talked about a lot, but I do find the inflation of star ratings fascinating, especially as it's mostly talked about on Goodreads. Unless you're kind of good at specifically reading a Goodreads rating, most things look like they get good ratings. From people I know who use Goodreads a lot, you know, it's kind of like you have to know that anything below about a 3.6 is considered a bad book. Anything about a four is a good book. Above a 4.2, 4.3 is a great book. Uh we've completely kind of lost the wide range of one through five. Now, this isn't a new thing, but I think it's certainly gotten worse over social media. I really liked how Alex Shepard put it in a now 10-year-old article from TNR. This is not a new debate. Literary criticism has been routinely lambasted for its niceness, its lack of intellectual rigor, and its mediocrity. n+1's first issue took on The Believer, which differed in at least one particular from, say, The New York Review of Books in that its overt criterion for inclusion is not expertise, but enthusiasm. Writing in Slate in 2012, the critic Jacob Silverman decried the effect of social media on reviewing, arguing that it made incisive criticism more difficult because your potential targets were almost always connected to you in some way. Reviewers shouldn't be recommendation machines, yet we have settled for that role in part because the solicitous communalism of Twitter encourages it. Why are book reviews so damn nice? Many argue that America has few professional critics left, which means that most of the criticism is being done by freelancers who lack institutional protection, and therefore are disincentivized from making sharp critiques. Freelancers are more likely to be drawn to books that they like because, unlike a professional reviewer, they have no obligation to review a hot new novel. 10 years later, and that criticism, in my opinion, rings truer than ever. Now, I've already made a whole video on the death of literary criticism and what that does or doesn't mean, so I won't recap that all here, but I do think it's an interesting point to add to this idea of star rating inflations. Star ratings are king now, a huge shift from previous decades, and likely how you, and definitely me, grew up. Before the pervasiveness of online ordering, where a review is easy to see, and you can see hundreds of different versions of the same product, you used to just kind of go into a store and browse and pick up what was available, or you had a recommendation from a friend. And I'm obviously talking on all products. Now, with books, instead of going to a bookstore and browsing, it has shifted more to online ordering, where again, we can see reviews for everything we buy. Now, does this extra positivity really matter? Well, I'd like to use a little microcosm of our community as an example to why this may actually be hurting things, and I want to talk about the self-published fantasy community. And I hope what I'm about to say doesn't give me ill will in the community. I hope they understand what I'm trying to say. But, I think it's really weird that reviewers of indie fantasy are encouraged to go easy on indie authors. Now, sometimes this is an implied saying, like, "Oh, you should just bump up that rating a little bit, rate it a little higher." But more often, I actually see the advice to, "If you don't like an indie book, don't rate it at all. Just pretend you haven't read it." Now, I completely get why they say this. Being an indie author feels like a complete uphill battle. It's expensive, you don't have the legitimization of a publisher, it's difficult to get into physical bookstores unless you literally physically can go into that bookstore and ask them to stock your books.

[00:09:53]There's a stigma not only with readers, but even with traditional authors who I've heard and seen heard with my own ears, seen with my own eyes directly criticize and look down on indie authors, which is really interesting in this day and age when there are plenty of very successful indie authors and even indie authors who have been able to go traditional because of their success. But I'm here to say despite those reasonings that I completely understand, I think the idea of going easy on indie authors or not posting negative reviews actually serves to increase the stigma against self-published works rather than help it. Because I've also heard many, many readers say that they notice when their reviewers go easy on indie books and that because they can't trust star ratings anymore of indie books cuz they don't think anybody ever does a negative review that they're going to stop reading self-published books cuz they assume they're all mid like the ones they already read that got good reviews.

[00:10:51]Good criticism of your novel only serves to legitimize it. Traditionally published authors will receive negative reviews. And I know you're saying, "Well, yeah, but they have the back end of a publishing house so it doesn't matter as much." But there are plenty of traditionally published authors that dwindle into obscurity because their book doesn't get good enough reviews. I hope you see the connection I'm trying to make here. Good faith criticism can not only be helpful, but also desirable.

[00:11:16]Nothing in this world gets universal acclaim and that's okay. It's a weird dichotomy. On the one hand, rage content sells, but on the other, there's this increasing sense of niceness in the review space as reviews shift from professional hands to the everyday man.

[00:11:30]This dichotomy creates the extremes of the internet that may at first seem at odds, but really both reinforce the lack of productive criticism. If all criticism is seen as rage bait, and the only acceptable way to engage with a book is positive, you can see how this has created the environment we are currently in. Now, we've just established that legitimate critique is important. And so now I'm going to say something that may sound a little contradictory, but stick with me. Stick with me.

[00:12:01]You, as an individual fan, do not have to seek out and engage with criticism of the things you love. I'm not saying as a fan that it is your job to go out and seek out criticism of your favorite book and really engage with it. No, it doesn't matter. You don't You don't have to do that. However, if you make that choice, if you make the choice to not engage with it, you also can't mock that criticism. I just feel like there's a huge increase of this where people are just seeing a sound bite or a headline or not even engaging with it. They just hear through the grapevine like, "Oh, supposedly people are saying this." And they respond to that without ever actually digging in and listening what the critics are saying. And that is irresponsible. You can respond to it if you viewed it and engaged with it, or you can ignore it.

[00:12:52]Either way is perfectly fine in how you personally want to engage with fandom and the things that you love. The distinction I'm trying to make here is that you need to understand legitimate criticism will exist and is important.

[00:13:03]You as an individual don't necessarily need to engage with it, but you can't also mock or not want it to exist in the first place. But it's also not generally bad every once in a while to check in with yourself and how you're responding with things. I've found that truly thoughtful criticism shouldn't automatically make you feel defensive.

[00:13:23]But instead it might make you feel reflective. Good criticism doesn't have to change your mind about everything, but it can just be good for a sole discussion or thought exercise. When you trust a critic, it's generally easier to see a negative review from them of something you like. I'll use a great example. Uh my good friend on here Leanna from Leanna's Library, her and I just have kind of an interesting intersection of taste. We always call it a Venn diagram where we have so many things that we both love, but also so many things that one of us loves and the others the other person heavily dislikes.

[00:13:57]Uh an example of this would be Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson, a book that I really love and uh Leanna decidedly did not. Uh but that discussion was amazing because she brought up so many interesting and good points of things that I had never thought about. And did it change my mind? Did I start disliking the book?

[00:14:16]No, I still love that book.

[00:14:18]But it's kind of fun when you can engage with someone and be like, "Oh, you're not wrong. I just don't agree." I feel like I genuinely become a better reader and a better critic when I can engage in that kind of thinking with another reader. Whether or not we agree, it doesn't matter. It's interesting to see how different people view a novel from yourself and it can really expand your way of thinking. Jenny having a negative review of the Star Cruiser Hotel didn't change anybody's experience that they had at the hotel. You could still have a fantastic experience experience. Her criticism doesn't change that. But also hilarious, it you couldn't even argue that it changed future patrons of the hotel like, "Oh, her review killed people's interest." Because the hotel had already announced it shut down date before her video got released. It was already a failed endeavor before she ever even criticized it. Anyways, this is another video that has the same bottom line as 100 other videos I've made on my channel. We need to remove ourselves from the endless rage cycles of the internet and really begin to think critically and understand what is important for communities to thrive.

[00:15:30]Your own personal curation is of course up to you, but you need to be sure that if you are curating your space in a certain way that you are not just responding to sound bites and not engaging accidentally in bad faith criticism of things because of the way you have protected yourself. And that understanding that nothing will be universally acclaimed and even if something you love gets yes, a very popular negative review, if that review is thorough and good criticism, that that is okay that it exist and it does not affect your personal love of the object or thing. Sound bites and posts with 280 characters aren't the way to interact with the world fully. Nuance and discussion are really important to a thriving literary community and also a thriving community of critical thinkers.

[00:16:22]Okay, I hope that made sense.

[00:16:25]If you like these kind of deep dives into fandom topics and video essays, please like and subscribe. That is the best way to support me. If you'd like to see what I'm currently reading as well as other nerdy rants, you can check me out on Instagram at bookworm.reviews.

[00:16:35]I'll see you next time. Bye.