"*shudder* genuine criticism"

Bile fascination is a vile inclination, and should not be catered to, encouraged, or endorsed, in any way shape or form. There's nothing good about bile: it's like junk food, it may be addictive, but you seldom actually enjoy it, and you often are worse off for consuming it.

Dude, no need to get prescriptive about personal taste.

You may not enjoy it, but that doesn't mean nobody else can. Pointing and laughing at something cheesy and terrible can be very relaxing.

My problem with that kind of criticism is that the temptation to exaggerate and give a dishonest review is so strong. One is playing to the crowd, and it's not a pleasant crowd in the least.

Nobody should be telling other people to kill themselves because they write awfully. Not even in jest, let alone in serious. Putting on this fakery that bad writing is a heinous crime worthy of the condemnation normally reserved for genocide is distasteful in the extreme.

I completely fail to understand how mocking things (as opposed to genuinely laughing at exceptional incongruity) is supposed to make me feel better about anything. Contemplating mediocrity makes me feel terrible. I prefer to focus my attention on things that are beautiful, or things that are trying to grow beautiful.

Honestly, it strikes me as childish. As if you (generic you) needed to find out how spectacularly others have failed to reassure yourself that, yes, you yourself haven't failed as hard, that you aren't as mediocre. Instead of, say, focusing on what the great and successful have done, on dissecting how they've done it, on trying to reproduce their success.

The only interest genuine failures have is as ways of listing what not to do. Not "against" the work, but "in favor of" the new blood. For example, The Nostalgia Critic did a great job of pointing out the flaws of A Troll In Central Park. Sure, he has an amusing way of shouting and panicking and being outraged, but the substance of that review was "Don't use padding, work on your dialogue, don't fake your characters getting an Aesop when, in fact, they haven't learned anything, be careful with pacing, if your story has a cataclysmic ending treat its consequences properly", etc, etc. The work is all the more interesting because, despite the terrible script, the animation was absolutely top-notch, and it was a perfect example of a work of art that couldn't rise to the masterpiece status it deserved because of some easily-avoidable mistakes.

Other Great Failures (as in, works that had the potential to be Great, but had one Fatal Flaw or two that stopped them from being as good as they could be, but still managed to be very successful in one way or another) that I find interesting are Harry Potter's three last books, James Cameron's Avatar, Michael Bay's Transformers, Twilight, and so on and so forth.

But again, the feeling isn't "I am outraged, how dare they present me with this horror" or "Har har, what a pathetic piece of crap", but "It's sad that it turned out like this. Let's see what lessons we can learn."

You don't achieve this result in criticism by being abrasive. Whatever truth you might be saying in abrasive, caustic and insulting critique is drowned out by the notion "This guy can't say anything nice to save his life so fuck him". (And in such critiques that notion is the right one, if you can't come across in either an objective or non-abrasive tone you deserve to have whatever truth you were speaking fall on deaf ears.) End result, the critique gets ignored every time.

edited 19th May '12 6:26:27 AM by MajorTom

You don't avoid being abrasive by offering thorough criticism to someone who actually gave a damn about their work. You probably can't.

It's actually incredibly easy to avoid being abrasive. I'm not saying easy for everyone, but there are people who can do it easily.

Can't? I don't think so. I've been given devastating critique by someone who managed to be perfectly polite throughout.

• You use too many ellipses.
• Your paragraphs are uneven, and the paragraph breaks are haphazard.
• Sentences uncomfortably long, too many clauses, too many commas.
• Too many ellipses: find another way of representing time passing slowly. I suggest short sentences. Separated by points. Like this.
• This or that turn of phrase comes off strange in English. Unless this work is supposed to explicitly feel like it was translated from a foreign work, don't import foreign turns of phrase or idioms.
• In general, avoid making the reader-that-does-not-know-you think you've made a mistake or that you're insane.

It still fell on me like a ton of bricks, and it's taken me a lot of time to recover, ego-wise, but I'm glad they took the time to pick my work apart and put it back together. That's what the word "critique" means. Not rubbing with sandpaper. Deconstructing and Reconstructing, Unbuilding and Rebuilding, telling one thing from another, discrimination, differentiating, analyzing.

I think there's only one domain that warrants actual outrage: aesops, thesis, and the author otherwise pushing notions and policies. That has a direct effect on the real world, it's an action with a moral content, and virulent accusation is an acceptable way of behaving... as long as you stay honest and responsible about it.

That seems like the type of criticism you'd want, really. I don't see what's so devastating about it.

It's devastating when you invest a lot of effort into it and are very proud of the result and feel you've been very clever, witty, and passionate, and then find out all your effort amounted to a load of crap. But devastation, in that sense, is good. It means crap gets torn down and burnt away so that there's now free space to grow something beautiful from the cinders.

See, I've done a mixed metaphor that actually works. Now I feel a little clever. If you went and pointed out that, to an outside viewer, it comes off as pedantic and forced (for example, I sure hope it doesn't), I'd be a little depressed, especially if you don't suggest ways to improve it besides Keep It Simple Stupid.

It kinda feels like when you're spending time with that special person, and you feel they reciprocate your feelings, and you invest yourself more and more in the relationship, only to find out very abruptly that you were completely misreading them, that they never imagined you felt this way about them, and that it was all a misunderstanding and your feelings were based on clouds. It's sort of the same kind of mental stumble. In Freudian terms, it's a withdrawal, a weaning, a betrayal by the world of the reassuring map you had of it and of your role in it. But, hey, that's what growing up means...

^^^ And that's exactly what I'm talking about. Truthful but non-abrasive critique.

If the critique is good then one should be able to get past how ever brash the critique is and learn something. Pretending that critique is always hindered by abrasiveness is childish.

Handle just mentioned an example where abrasion is possible. I don't see where you're getting that vibe that THAT is what we are saying.

edited 19th May '12 9:27:36 AM by MrAHR

"able to get past": so you do acknowledge that it takes an extra effort to overcome that obstacle, you acknowledge that it's "in the way". Hence, hindrance.

I'm thinking of journalism and political stuff, mostly. But you aren't criticizing the work as a work of art, but the message it carries, so it's not exactly "critique" anymore, so it's not really an exception.

edited 19th May '12 9:30:59 AM by TheHandle

Yes it's a "hindrance", but how big of hindrance?

Depends on how strong and tough you are or how high you can jump. Some might be able to fly above it or even walk through it. Conversely, if you don't expect it, even a small step could make you fall flat on your face.

Either way, why place a hindrance at all? Because it looks pretty? One of the most basic pieces of writing advice is "Don't add unnecessary things." Doesn't this apply to critique too?

The critique only gets ignored if you are the kind of person who ignores valid criticism because you are too sensitive.

Things that take themselves seriously but sound like jokes are funny. It's as simple as that. You can try to make all the justifications you can to vilify those who make fun of terrible crap, but it won't change the very simple fact that really terrible crap that takes itself seriously is hilarious.

The Room is hilarious because it's terrible. That's just what it is.

True, but if Wiseau honestly came up to you and said "can you please help me make this better" you better not just make fun of it, otherwise you are shit at your job.

I tend to ask myself "Can I see this published" and "Would I like it even if it was published"?

This means I act as proof-reader and fact-checker, as well as creative critic. I'm not as detailed with the positive as I am with problems, but that's because a writer doesn't particularly need suggestions to improve on their strengths, and I don't believe in gushing. My reviews might take thousands of words, redline a copy of the manuscript for typos, and include statements like like "This outfit would not exist, considering the limitations of the period" or "That's not how you hotwire a car" as well as "This dialogue is stilted".

I also do not believe in using creative writing or a personal tone to produce a technical review. In a creative writing class, nearly everyone found my style hard to stomach because I was very clinical and at times my critique was longer than the piece.

It takes a work of professional (or "this should be" professional) quality for me to have nothing to comment on whatsoever. And I do admit that if I can't see a work being published without a complete rewrite, I will say whatever I want in whichever un-businesslike way I want, because I won't want to invest as much energy in it.

Odd to say, considering you wrote this.

You mean "I find The Room hilarious because it is terrible". I find it more elegant, not to mention that it is more honest, and modest, when people admit to the subjectiveness of their opinions by preceding sentences with "I find that". There's no such thing as "food that tastes good", but there is such a thing as "food whose taste I like" and "food whose taste will have a high chance of being liked by random person from a given set of people".

I do not find The Room hilarious, I find it strange and, most importantly, boring.

I do not attempt to vilify the people who take pleasure in vilifying others' work. I only attempt to provide an explanation for their behavior. You have provided a non-explanation: "It's funny because it's bad.". I think laughing at other people's misery and mistakes, unsympathetically, is childish, in the most neutral sense of the term. "Har har, he fell down and hit his face, and now he's bleeding."

Laughing at misery and mistakes sympathetically, as in "Gosh, poor girl, I remember being in the same sticky situation once. Hopefully she'll make it through." or "Gosh, that was a stupid decision. Thankfully I've outgrown that stage of maturity. Perhaps this person will do the same one day, I hope so at least.", is essentially laughing at the harshness of the world we live in, and acknowledging that we are all in a fight against our own flaws and Murphy's Law, every minute of every day, and sometimes we lose. It's what makes Kafka Komedy or Mel Brooks works funny, at least to me.

You sound like exactly the type of critic I am always looking for. I like someone to say "In spite of all the flaws I've outlined, there's X, Y and Z which were pretty good, so there is something to this work that makes it deserving to be worked on and improved." and also "Your strengths are A, B, C, now focus on your weaknesses." But actual gushing, per se, isn't helpful at all: it only proves that the reader understood what I was trying to achieve, and liked it, it doesn't say anything about how to do it better.

edited 19th May '12 10:16:44 AM by TheHandle

Yeah, but what the hell does this have to do with the topic? The original point was that a professional critic who published his critics for the public needs to cater to the "I enjoy terrible crap because it's hilarious" public and therefore needs to point out how awful some things are. Not that this is the only reason he needs to point out all the terrible crap in a work, but I digress.

Then The Handle said that he couldn't understand why people enjoyed reading terrible crap and I replied that "Dude, it's hilarious that's why."

You are mixing up two different arguments here.

That's a non-explanation. What is hilarious about it?

In the same way that anime producers need to cater to lolicons, that is to say, not at all, and when they do, it's to the detriment of the work.

edited 19th May '12 10:18:59 AM by TheHandle

Is it so hard to believe that I've changed after a year?

If you were to click the edit button, copy that post's text, paste it here, and edit it before publishing, with your new ideas and perspectives, what would you change?