Monday, March 11, 2013

Critical Situations

Reviews irritate me. Not the kind in the newspaper. Those are easily avoided and besides, as some of you have pointed out, nobody (but me) reads newspapers anymore anyhow.

Opinion masquerading as information bothers me.

Yes, I understand the irony of a blogger blogging that.

And yes, I know, that’s like saying I don’t like the Internet. I only use a teensy bit of the Internet, in much the same way that I only use a tiny part of the block where I live, but it works for me.

Nice Internet. Good Internet. Have a cookie, Internet.

Ahem.

Back in Ye Olden Days of Yore, you knew the critics in the paper. Well, you didn’t really, but you knew what kinds of things they liked. So if Reviewer X liked a movie, or Reviewer Y didn’t, you had a pretty good idea whether you should plop down your $4.50 to see it.

Ah, the Goode Olde Days.

That was before you could watch ten minutes of the movie online or hear the director interviewed on a podcast. Casting decisions are publicized immediately, and buzz begins in cinematic vitro. By the time the thing hits A Theater Near You, it’s old news.

And not necessarily Goode Olde news, either.

Of course the phenomenon spans media. Television is given the same premature scrutiny. Books too, but nobody seems to care about them as much.

It also happens to ideas.

A meme is a meme is a meme, but by the time it filters down to your slow old Auntie, it’s been diluted, spoofed and decried. I missed the Harlem Shake entirely, not that I feel like I missed much.

See? That’s the problem. I have an opinion about it, though I never saw it.

I would blame the Internet, but I don’t want to make it angry. Internet, have another cookie.

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