History SoYouWantTo / BeACausticCritic

Don't be afraid to theme several reviews about the same sort of thing every once in a while. Lots of critics do it-Linkara has PSA Hell, [[FrankMiller Miller Time]] and Secret Origins Month, the Nostalgia Critic had Nostalgiaween, DrAshens has Poundland specials (and a subset of those in [[MasochistsMeal Poundland food specials]]), you name it.

* For deconstructions, look no further than Mister Plinkett of RedLetterMedia.

* {{Tatsudoshi}} and the Multipurpose Spam crew on the whole tend to have a lot of great moments as critics with their "Your Choice Reviews" series on their secondary channel. They've reviewed an extremely broad range of things in an effect-free vlog format and you can bet they have something strong, and [[CrossesTheLineTwice more]] [[RefugeInAudacity than]] [[DeadBabyComedy a bit]] [[EqualOpportunityOffender shocking]] to say about each one as well.

First of all, understand that your role as a Caustic Critic, no matter what kind you see yourself becoming, is first and foremost that of an entertainer. People will line up to watch you take apart things that usually wouldn't be too palatable by themselves and make them bearable by virtue of making jokes at their expense. To put it another way, MysteryScienceTheater3000 makes bad movies entertaining by watching them and making jokes about it while it plays. Think of yourself as doing that with a summarized version of whatever it is you'll have in front of you.

** If you want to play a persona, study TheCinemaSnob, who plays the shtick of being your typical pretentious film critic to the hilt. According to him, most of his Snob reviews aren't his actual opinions, but the Snob's.

Hosting your work is as easy as looking for a blog and/or a video hosting site. The combination of Blogger and YouTube, Blip or similar video sites works wonders for the bulk of established Caustic Critics. For writers (and the odd video producer), there are websites like Cracked.

The most popular targets of Caustic Critics are movies, video games and television shows. However, there's a niche for everything if you can build convincing reviews and acts around them. Linkara proved review shows about comic books could work beautifully. Dr. Ashen reviews strange gadgets and random crap found at Poundland and makes it entertaining. If we're going to include non-video reviews, {{Seanbaby}} writes funny articles making fun of fighting and mixed martial arts among a whole litany of other topics. There's the soul of being a Caustic Critic: the entertainment value of your reviews is what you live and die by.

* {{Armake21}}/Marc0 proves that sometimes, all you need to do as a Caustic Critic to prove a video game is bad is to do a glorified Let's Play of it.

It's hard to overstate that there's a thin line between being a Caustic Critic and just [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontLike Complaining About Shows/Games/Whatever You Don't Like]]. Hearing someone make fun of something and pick apart why it's bad for ten or twenty minutes is fun, but hearing someone rant and bash without a point for that same amount of time is tedious or, at worst, as bad as whatever they're reviewing. Also, make sure you do all your research. Watch that movie you're going to review more than once if you can, don't miss an episode of the show you're going to talk about, play the game you're about to rip a new one through to the end and try to do everything. The only thing worse than someone complaining about something they don't like is someone [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch complaining about something they know nothing about]].

Let's face it: in the information age, anybody who looks at the fame of people like the Nostalgia Critic or the Angry Video Game Nerd can in theory be a critic of something, especially on the Internet.

It may be a saturated medium, but you can go from one of the many, many, many drops in the bucket (or downright SnarkBait) to someone people will really pay attention to-hey, you may even end up on Channel Awesome, BlisteredThumbs or other sites with clout if you know what you're doing.

ConstructiveCriticism is a good thing to have in your arsenal. In fact, it's a sort of understood prerequisite. At some point you have to give a balanced summation of what you've just reviewed. SF Debris does this beautifully, picking apart and dropping punchlines into reviews of even good episodes and movies. If you're reviewing something especially bad or controversial you need to suggest how it could have been improved or otherwise altered to work better. Note that sometimes a critic will come up against something so terrible that this might not be possible, so it's not a must.

The first thing you'll have to figure out is what you want to review. Decide how broad your scope is going to be first: are you going to review a broad genre or medium, such as the Angry Video Game Nerd and video games in general, or the Nostalgia Critic and movies or television shows of all kinds, provided they're at least so old? How about a somewhat unorthodox subject, such as Linkara, who reviews comics? You could also review a wide range of things but have one signature. Again, SF Debris manages to review all manner of sci-fi television shows and movies, and has stepped out of that boundary to review cartoons, action movies and fantasy films. However, he's most known for his Star Trek episode reviews. To provide another example, Spoony's defining reviews are topped by his ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' review, but he's reviewed many other games and movies.

If you can get the resources together to feature yourself on your reviews, decide on if you're going to have a persona or not. The former will take more acting than the latter to pull off convincingly, even more so if like many a modern internet review personality you're going to introduce some kind of backstory to tie everything together and give the viewer something other than your reviews to pay attention to. Linkara and {{Animerica}} are two good examples of how to do this, and Spoony has experimented with this from time to time when reviewing several things in a theme such as his Final Fantasy reviews or his Ultima Retrospective, treating each series of reviews as a sort of story arc. You can also pull this off as an act if you're just typing out reviews, but that takes more subtlety to not let it intrude on a written piece.

* The AngryVideoGameNerd certainly didn't invent the Caustic Critic, but he undoubtedly started remaking it for the Internet age.

The first thing you'll have to figure out is what you want to review. Decide how broad your scope is going to be first: are you going to review a broad genre or medium, such as the Angry Video Game Nerd and video games in general, or the Nostalgia Critic and movies or television shows of all kinds, provided they're at least so old? How about a somewhat unorthodox subject, such as Linkara, who reviews comics? You could also review a wide range of things but have one signature. Again, SF Debris manages to review all manner of sci-fi television shows and movies, and has stepped out of that boundary to review cartoons, action movies and fantasy films. However, he's most known for his Star Trek episode reviews. To provide another example, Spoony's defining reviews are topped by his FinalFantasy VIII review, but he's reviewed many other games and movies.

[[GeniusBonus Genius Bonuses]], [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]] and the like are a good idea to keep for when they're appropriate. This doesn't just apply to the internet, although it's certainly where it most comes in handy. People who are willing to sit through your reviews will undoubtedly have some kind of understanding of the genre or medium you will be reviewing, and making references here and there will prove you know as much as you're letting on. No matter what you do, also remember that you need a wide range of humor in order to stay interesting as a critic. Let the occasional [[TakeThat cheap shot]] or [[IncrediblyLamePun pun]] (or HurricaneOfPuns for that matter) slide, but don't let any one thing become your only shtick.

If you are going to have these, they should be noticeable but shouldn't upstage the actual review, which should be the meat of your criticism. Most people do it by deliberately keeping the underlying stories simple, short and cartoonish or episodic, such as [[AngryJoe Angry Joe's]] war against Corporate Commander, which isn't so much an actual storyline as it is just themed set dressing to aid the review. Some people can get more complex than that, such as Mister Plinkett, but only a few have succeeded.

* {{Tatsudoshi}} and the Multipurpose Spam crew on the whole tend to have a lot of great moments as critics with their "Your Choice Reviews" series on their secondary channel. They've reviewed just about everything under the sun and you can bet they have something strong, and [[CrossesTheLineTwice more]] [[RefugeInAudacity than]] [[DeadBabyComedy a bit]] [[EqualOpportunityOffender shocking]] to say about each one as well.

[[GeniusBonus Genius Bonuses]], [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]] and the like are a good idea to keep for when they're appropriate. This doesn't just apply to the internet, although it's certainly where it most comes in handy. People who are willing to sit through your reviews will undoubtedly have some kind of understanding of the genre or medium you will be reviewing, and making references here and there will prove you know as much as you're letting on. The easiest way to do this is to give a swift TakeThat to something everybody knows was bad-it's only a cheap shot if you set it up like one. No matter what you do, also remember that you need a wide range of humor in order to stay interesting as a critic.

ConstructiveCriticism is a good thing to have in your arsenal. At some point you have to give a balanced summation of what you've just reviewed. SF Debris does this beautifully, picking apart and dropping punchlines into reviews of even good episodes and movies. If you're reviewing something especially bad or controversial you need to suggest how it could have been improved or otherwise altered to work better. Note that sometimes a critic will come up against something so terrible that this might not be possible, so it's not a must.

The first thing you'll have to figure out is what you want to review. Decide how broad your scope is going to be first: are you going to review a broad genre or medium, such as the Angry Video Game Nerd and video games in general, or the Nostalgia Critic and movies or television shows of all kinds, provided they're at least so old? How about a somewhat unorthodox subject, such as Linkara, who reviews comics? You could also review a wide range of things but have one signature. Again, SF Debris manages to review all manner of sci-fi television shows and movies, and has stepped out of that boundary to review cartoons, action movies and fantasy films. However, he's most known for his Star Trek episode reviews. To provide another example, Spoony's defining reviews are topped by his Final Fantasy VIII review, but he's reviewed many other games and movies.

If you can get the resources together to feature yourself on your reviews, decide on if you're going to have a persona or not. The former will take more acting than the latter to pull off convincingly, even more so if like many a modern internet review personality you're going to introduce some kind of backstory to tie everything together and give the viewer something other than your reviews to pay attention to. Linkara and {{Animerica}} are two good examples of how to do this, and Spoony has experimented with this from time to time when reviewing several things in a theme such as his Final Fantasy reviews or his Ultima Retrospective, treating each series of reviews as a sort of story arc.

It's hard to overstate that there's a thin line between being a Caustic Critic and just [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontLike Complaining About Shows/Games/Whatever You Don't Like]]. Hearing someone make fun of something and pick apart why it's bad for ten or twenty minutes is fun, but hearing someone rant and bash without a point for that same amount of time is tedious or, at worst, as bad as whatever they're reviewing. Also, make sure you do all your research. The only thing worse than someone complaining about something they don't like is someone [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch complaining about something they know nothing about]].

For the purposes of this article let's focus on Internet reviewing. We're here to learn the building blocks of being a CausticCritic, not, say, the difficulties and nuances of getting on television or being published in a paper.

It's hard to overstate that there's a thin line between being a Caustic Critic and just [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontLike Complaining About Shows/Games/Whatever You Don't Like]]. Hearing someone make fun of something and pick apart why it's bad for ten or twenty minutes is fun, but hearing someone rant and bash without a point for that same amount of time is tedious or, at worst, as bad as whatever they're reviewing. Also, make sure you do all your research. The only thing worse than someone complaining about something they don't like is someone complaining about something they know nothing about.

* Armake21/Marc0 proves that sometimes, all you need to do as a Caustic Critic to prove a video game is bad is to do a glorified Let's Play of it.

Exaggerated reactions and rants can be very funny, but not if you run them into the ground. A common criticism of the Nostalgia Critic is that he overreacts so much that it's annoying. Given that DougWalker, the man behind him, said that he based the Critic and his mannerisms off of DaffyDuck, it's not so surprising that his cartoonish antics came off as kind of ridiculous coming from a real person to some viewers. Save the freakouts for when they're appropriate. By that same token, cultivate some Running Gags if you must, but don't run them into the ground either.

Another common criticism of long runners like the Nostalgia Critic is that as the show went on up until his retirement [[spoiler:at the end of ToBoldlyFlee]], he ran out of good material and just started reviewing whatever he could make fun of. Regardless of if the critics were right or not, don't let that happen. Make sure you can keep your material fresh and exciting, and don't look like you're just looking for something to bash or make fun of.

* The Nostalgia Critic and most of ThatGuyWithTheGlasses applied this same approach to movies, music, more recent games, anime and anything else its members can come up with.

* ZeroPunctuation created a brand-new way of presenting quick, brutal reviews of video games.
* SFDebris has made numerous "Opinionated Reviews." Note that not everything he looks at is necessarily bad, but he can still make funny comments about it regardless.

* The IrateGamer is a master class on how to not put together an internet review show based around this kind of style. Not helping matters is his fanbase.
* So, so many nobody has heard of due to poorly-thought-out gimmicks, over-production, or being The Theme Park Version of some established reviewer or show. {{Retsupurae}} will bring up one every once in a while.

* So, so many nobody has heard of due to poorly-thought-out gimmicks, over-production, or being The Theme Park Version of some established reviewer or show. {{Retsupurae}} will bring up one every once in a while.