Is criticism to be frowned upon?

[Groucho]

Great piece by Bret Easton Ellis on Living in the Cult of Likability from NYT:

...To be accepted we have to follow an upbeat morality code where everything must be liked and everybody’s voice respected, and any person who has a negative opinion — a dislike — will be shut out of the conversation. Anyone who resists such groupthink is ruthlessly shamed. Absurd doses of invective are hurled at the supposed troll to the point that the original “offense” often seems negligible by comparison.

Yes, it sounds familiar. To the extent that I actually seek out the genuinely "negative" voice, which I find far more enjoyable and interesting than the unrelenting positive. These days in the UK, the news is mainly the reporting of "twitterstorms" i.e. lynch mobs who gather around anyone who expresses a slightly interesting opinion about anything.

 

[dallasjustice]

I read that too. He's right. A lot of folks on the internet think their opinion really matters. There's no longer a need to be proficient at anything. All one needs is an opinion.

Great piece by Bret Easton Ellis on Living in the Cult of Likability from NYT:

On a recent episode of the television series “South Park,” the character Cartman and other townspeople who are enthralled with Yelp, the app that lets customers rate and review restaurants, remind maître d’s and waiters that they will be posting reviews of their meals. These “Yelpers” threaten to give the eateries only one star out of five if they don’t please them and do exactly as they say. The restaurants feel that they have no choice but to comply with the Yelpers, who take advantage of their power by asking for free dishes and making suggestions on improving the lighting. The restaurant employees tolerate all this with increasing frustration and anger — at one point Yelp reviewers are even compared to the Islamic State group — before both parties finally arrive at a truce. Yet unknown to the Yelpers, the restaurants decide to get their revenge by contaminating the Yelpers’ plates with every bodily fluid imaginable.

The point of the episode is that today everyone thinks that they’re a professional critic (“Everyone relies on my Yelp reviews!”), even if they have no idea what they’re talking about. But it’s also a bleak commentary on what has become known as the “reputation economy.” In depicting the restaurants’ getting their revenge on the Yelpers, the episode touches on the fact that services today are also rating us, which raises a question: How will we deal with the way we present ourselves online and in social media, and how do individuals brand themselves in what is a widening corporate culture?

The idea that everybody thinks they’re specialists with voices that deserve to be heard has actually made everyone’s voice less meaningful. All we’re doing is setting ourselves up to be sold to — to be branded, targeted and data-mined. But this is the logical endgame of the democratization of culture and the dreaded cult of inclusivity, which insists that all of us must exist under the same umbrella of corporate regulation — a mandate that dictates how we should express ourselves and behave.

Most people of a certain age probably noticed this when they joined their first corporation, Facebook, which has its own rules regarding expressions of opinion and sexuality. Facebook encouraged users to “like” things, and because it was a platform where many people branded themselves on the social Web for the first time, the impulse was to follow the Facebook dictum and present an idealized portrait of their lives — a nicer, friendlier, duller self. And it was this burgeoning of the likability cult and the dreaded notion of “relatability” that ultimately reduced everyone to a kind of neutered clockwork orange, enslaved to the corporate status quo. To be accepted we have to follow an upbeat morality code where everything must be liked and everybody’s voice respected, and any person who has a negative opinion — a dislike — will be shut out of the conversation. Anyone who resists such groupthink is ruthlessly shamed. Absurd doses of invective are hurled at the supposed troll to the point that the original “offense” often seems negligible by comparison.


I’ve been rated and reviewed since I became a published author at the age of 21, so this environment only seems natural to me. A reputation emerged based on how many reviewers liked or didn’t like my book. That’s the way it goes — cool, I guess. I was liked as often as I was disliked, and that was OK because I didn’t get emotionally involved. Being reviewed negatively never changed the way I wrote or the topics I wanted to explore, no matter how offended some readers were by my descriptions of violence and sexuality. As a member of Generation X, rejecting, or more likely ignoring, the status quo came easily to me. One of my generation’s loudest anthems was Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation,” whose chorus rang out: “I don’t give a damn about my reputation/ I’ve never been afraid of any deviation.” I was a target of corporate-think myself when the company that owned my publishing house decided it didn’t like the contents of a particular novel I had been contracted to write and refused to publish it on the grounds of “taste.” (I could have sued but another publisher who liked the book published it instead.) It was a scary moment for the arts — a conglomerate was deciding what should and should not be published and there were loud arguments and protests on both sides of the divide. But this was what the culture was about: People could have differing opinions and discuss them rationally. You could disagree and this was considered not only the norm but interesting as well. It was a debate. This was a time when you could be opinionated — and, yes, a questioning, reasonable critic — and not be considered a troll.

Now all of us are used to rating movies, restaurants, books, even doctors, and we give out mostly positive reviews because, really, who wants to look like a hater? But increasingly, services are also rating us. Companies in the sharing economy, like Uber and Airbnb, rate their customers and shun those who don’t make the grade. Opinions and criticisms flow in both directions, causing many people to worry about how they’re measuring up. Will the reputation economy put an end to the culture of shaming or will the bland corporate culture of protecting yourself by “liking” everything — of being falsely polite just to be accepted by the herd — grow stronger than ever? Giving more positive reviews to get one back? Instead of embracing the true contradictory nature of human beings, with all of their biases and imperfections, we continue to transform ourselves into virtuous robots. This in turn has led to the awful idea — and booming business — of reputation management, where a firm is hired to help shape a more likable, relatable You. Reputation management is about gaming the system. It’s a form of deception, an attempt to erase subjectivity and evaluation through intuition, for a price.

Ultimately, the reputation economy is about making money. It urges us to conform to the blandness of corporate culture and makes us react defensively by varnishing our imperfect self so we can sell and be sold things. Who wants to share a ride or a house or a doctor with someone who doesn’t have a good online reputation? The reputation economy depends on everyone maintaining a reverentially conservative, imminently practical attitude: Keep your mouth shut and your skirt long, be modest and don’t have an opinion. The reputation economy is yet another example of the blanding of culture, and yet the enforcing of groupthink has only increased anxiety and paranoia, because the people who embrace the reputation economy are, of course, the most scared. What happens if they lose what has become their most valuable asset? The embrace of the reputation economy is an ominous reminder of how economically desperate people are and that the only tools they have to raise themselves up the economic ladder are their sparklingly upbeat reputations — which only adds to their ceaseless worry over their need to be liked.

Empowerment doesn’t come from liking this or that thing, but from being true to our messy contradictory selves. There are limits to showcasing our most flattering assets because no matter how genuine and authentic we think we are, we’re still just manufacturing a construct, no matter how accurate it may be. What is being erased in the reputation economy are the contradictions inherent in all of us. Those of us who reveal flaws and inconsistencies become terrifying to others, the ones to avoid. An “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”-like world of conformity and censorship emerges, erasing the opinionated and the contrarian, corralling people into an ideal. Forget the negative or the difficult. Who wants solely that? But what if the negative and the difficult were attached to the genuinely interesting, the compelling, the unusual? That’s the real crime being perpetrated by the reputation culture: stamping out passion; stamping out the individual.

 

[Ron Resnick]

A lot of folks on the internet think their opinion really matters. There's no longer a need to be proficient at anything. All one needs is an opinion.

I agree with this. But hasn't this been true for a long time?

For example, don't most people who merely watch international current events on CNN think they have an educated and valuable opinion on national security policy and international relations, as valid as the opinion of anyone else? Don't such people blithely ignore the fact that other people dedicate their careers to becoming true experts on such matters, and that such professionals' opinions might be more valid than the opinions of people who merely watch CNN?

I think the internet simply has provided a mechanism to allow people to indulge their delusional sense of self-importance by broadcasting their opinions widely and easily and for free. I think that when the cost of communication is zero the quantity of communication increases enormously, and the quality of that communication declines.

 

[853guy]

I agree with this. But hasn't this been true for a long time?

For example, don't most people who merely watch international current events on CNN think they have an educated and valuable opinion on national security policy and international relations, as valid as the opinion of anyone else? Don't such people blithely ignore the fact that other people dedicate their careers to becoming true experts on such matters, and that such professionals' opinions might be more valid than the opinions of people who merely watch CNN?

I think the internet simply has provided a mechanism to allow people to indulge their delusional sense of self-importance by broadcasting their opinions widely and easily and for free. I think that when the cost of communication is zero the quantity of communication increases enormously, and the quality of that communication declines.

I think it has been true for a long time, yes. I'd like to suggest that long before the internet existed, newspapers, radio and television did a pretty good job of communicating various forms of propaganda for the masses to easily digest. Now we are our own news/propaganda generators and disseminators.

But in the main, I think the signal-to-noise ratio has never been higher.*

*He says, in the middle of a TVC for soap-powder, posting on a forum.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I don't think CNN alone is going to give you anything but the broad strokes. Read the wire feeds if you want the news, assuming that's what Ron means by current events. Do the current events-educated and experienced have a more credible POV than civilians? Not necessarily. If you do read those wire feeds you can know what's going on with about as little spin as you're going to find; the rest of it is theory and opinion. You can see the news and believe whatever you want about it, and it's fairly likely you'll find someone published who agrees with you.

And yes, the noise on the web is deafening. But it's also the most effective public forum that has ever existed. In a representative democracy bought by special interests, it may be our best hope for the voice of the people.

Tim

 

[DaveyF]

I don't think CNN alone is going to give you anything but the broad strokes. Read the wire feeds if you want the news, assuming that's what Ron means by current events. Do the current events-educated and experienced have a more credible POV than civilians? Not necessarily. If you do read those wire feeds you can know what's going on with about as little spin as you're going to find; the rest of it is theory and opinion. You can see the news and believe whatever you want about it, and it's fairly likely you'll find someone published who agrees with you.

And yes, the noise on the web is deafening. But it's also the most effective public forum that has ever existed. In a representative democracy bought by special interests, it may be our best hope for the voice of the people.

Tim

Tim, that would assume a couple of things...1) that anyone representing the special interests is even cognizant of the discontent online and 2) that they even care.

Personally, I highly doubt that this 'voice' of the people has any power whatsoever.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Tim, that would assume a couple of things...1) that anyone representing the special interests is even cognizant of the discontent online and 2) that they even care.

Personally, I highly doubt that this 'voice' of the people has any power whatsoever.

Only when a lot of them are saying the same thing, but mass cyber-opinion has driven business decisions. One thing is for sure - "special interests" won't care what's happening online or in social media until it threatens their pocketbooks.

Tim

 

[the sound of Tao]

I'm unsure that the age of communication will be viewed as a golden age for free speech or the time that we finally realised just how unenlightened we actually are given that we live in a time when virtually everything known is available to virtually everyone.

Constructive open criticism requires the maturity of a good moral compass on both sides of the conversation to be at its best. You need more than just knowledge, you need wisdom to balance it as well.

If criticism is driven merely by some competitive agenda to prove ourselves as better rather than than the intention of purely helping another than it may be honest but still stained by it's underlying agenda. It'd truly be great if all this free spirited online conversation ended with people ultimately being more like their true selves rather than just forever acting out their small and more base selves.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Agreed spaz... Saying things with a good heart is the start, when people are feeling defensive it's the first thing they close off, sharing and caring is part of the way to understanding and since enthusiasm resides in the centre it is the first victim of the defensive pose.

Those siege like conversations where people battle to the death endlessly defending their point of view without seeing that the opposite perspective is also a truth are life draining and forum killers for sure.

 

[Blizzard]

life draining and very depressing for sure but sadly its the petrol that keeps forums going. it may kill your/our idea of what shared expirience should be.

Even worse is those who start arguments with absolutely nothing to back up their end. Just want to argue for the sake of argument. The way I see it, if you're going to try to shut down someone, at very least have solid supporting evidence for your end of the argument. If you don't, it's flat out trolling.

 

[DaveyF]

One thing is for sure - "special interests" won't care what's happening online or in social media until it threatens their pocketbooks.

Tim

That's for sure...100% agree.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

right on sister... its not the knowledge that a issue its the underlying motivation to aquire it and how it is intended to be use . i find people with real knowledge that are true experts in thier field have a enthusiasum thats the driving force and are offten the most opened minded. its those insecrue knowledge horders that use it as a weapon for defending thier fragile sense of self that are a issue.

Yes, but it also could also be that our own "fragile sense of self" sees "enthusiasm" and "open minded(ness)" in the "true experts" who agree with what we've already decided is "true knowledge."

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

oh you think what i mean by true knowledge is just people that agree with me lol.

intresting determination that speaks volumes about...??

quisque sibi verus.

I don't know you well enough to come to that conclusion, but it is always a possibility.

 

[Groucho]

Isn't it the case that for every sunny 'positive' opinion there is a corresponding 'negative' i.e. an implied criticism? For example, if someone says "I can always hear the beneficial effect of expensive mains cables." then this is a belittling of the listening abilities of people who can't, and is also a trashing of most engineers and those who have thought deeply about the issue and have a different opinion. It says "Anyone who cannot hear the effect of mains cables has a tin ear, and anyone who argues that mains cables have an insignificant effect doesn't know what they're talking about."

Personally, I don't mind if an argument is expressed civilly either as a 'positive' or a 'negative' - I am not so insecure and easily bruised that I will call for the person to be excommunicated or select the 'Ignore' option!

 

[microstrip]

Isn't it the case that for every sunny 'positive' opinion there is a corresponding 'negative' i.e. an implied criticism? For example, if someone says "I can always hear the beneficial effect of expensive mains cables." then this is a belittling of the listening abilities of people who can't, and is also a trashing of most engineers and those who have thought deeply about the issue and have a different opinion. It says "Anyone who cannot hear the effect of mains cables has a tin ear, and anyone who argues that mains cables have an insignificant effect doesn't know what they're talking about."
(...)

A very reasonable point. But those posting the "negative" can always support and give credit to their findings referring in detail to any "positive" they manage to find. But they choose not to do it.

 

[Groucho]

A very reasonable point. But those posting the "negative" can always support and give credit to their findings referring in detail to any "positive" they manage to find. But they choose not to do it.

Can you give a hypothetical example? What if the argument is based on pure logic? Does it need any support and/or further detail?

 

[microstrip]

Can you give a hypothetical example? What if the argument is based on pure logic? Does it need any support and/or further detail?

Just read ITU BS.1116 on positive tests. Someone claiming a negative must also test if the system is resolving enough giving evidence of testing with positives.

I was just addressing the part on listening experiences not any logic exercises.

 

[DaveC]

Even worse is those who start arguments with absolutely nothing to back up their end. Just want to argue for the sake of argument. The way I see it, if you're going to try to shut down someone, at very least have solid supporting evidence for your end of the argument. If you don't, it's flat out trolling.

I'm not sure it's actually conscious... people form strong opinions based on just a passing knowledge of a subject, maybe based on what a self-proclaimed "expert" has told them. They then identify with that belief and take it personally when it's challenged even though the basis for holding the belief may be insubstantial, and therefore the person cannot actually form a coherent response to the challenged belief. I.E. "it's just ones and zeros"...

 

[Jinjuku]

If you aren't open to criticism then you can't grow. Uptone is a great example. When push came to shove and either I or Amir was willing to fly out to and proctor a sbt regardless of the measurements then criticism is totally called for.