defending the critic

(a self-defense)

"Critics are frustrated artists."

That's what wannabe artists say when their egos are bruised.

[even I sometimes can’t help but think this after getting “constructive feedback”]

"Who are you to tell me my writing sucks when you can’t even form a decent sentence?"

"If you're so good, why can't you do it?"

This thinking is very wrong.

[this is a note-to-self]

Haven't you seen a new mom who thinks her newborn is soo cute n’adorable—while everyone else sees Dobby from Harry Potter?

You don't need to make your own baby to see that another person's baby resembles a house elf. Just like you don't need to write a novel to judge one.

Creating and evaluating use different brain muscles. It's possible to excel at one and bomb at the other.

Making an awesome painting needs spatial skills + hand control to execute vision.

Critiquing that painting? Having seen tons of art + analytical bent to contextualize.

A related misconception:

"Those who cannot do, teach."

—this one came from George Bernard Shaw.

[maybe his teacher gave his essay a C-]

[and maybe he forgot Aristotle mentored Alexander the Great without commanding armies himself]

Teaching requires its own skillset that differs from the skills required in doing what you’re teaching.

A doctor with shaky hands can still be a good mentor to junior surgeons with steadier hands.

This blog post is my own way of giving myself permission to pedestalized (I know, this isn’t a word) works I love and talk shit about works that are disgusting to me.

In college (I majored in Communications/Media Studies), we were always reminded to be “conscious media consumers.”

This means looking beyond the surface of the movie, book, podcast, vlog, etc. instead of mindlessly devouring content that comes our way.

We look for subtext - “the meaning behind”.

We look for disguised ideology.

We ask ourselves - “who made this?”

And maybe more importantly - “who funded this?”

“What is it reacting to?” What? Why? How?

Criticism is the way we materialize and communicate this conscious media consumption.

Through good criticism, we get more context.

We develop better taste and appreciation of truly great works.

There’s so much bad content now (thanks, World Wide Web!).

If there’s one thing these “creators” are good at, it’s playing the algorithm.

So they saturate our feeds, drowning out the truly great works.

It’s time that we stop being kind to these “creators” who are wasting our limited time here on earth shoving their content down our throats.

We need to look at criticism differently and encourage more of it.