Greetings! "Influencer" style reviewers that have popped up over the past few years tend to get under my skin. They are easy enough to avoid, but I wonder how much reach this kind of thing has. Often I find a top goodreads.com review on a given book is written by one of these self-styled critics with tons of followers. More often than that, I find that "top review" is simply a discussion of the structural complexity of a novel and how the reviewer found it "difficult to follow." Please understand that I can recognize a small pond when I see one, but as the traditional literary ocean, compared to new media, seems to look more like a lake every year, I find myself troubled by this kind of criticism. Now there may be a whole boatload of social media-based critics that are very good at what they do, and I just haven't seen or recognized their work. I am not trying to claim that anyone's opinion about a piece of art is invalid. I believe everyone is entitled to their personal opinions about the artwork they have experienced. At the risk of a minor digression, I believe that the consumer's opinion is the reality of the art on a fundamental level; Let’s not go there. My main issue is the mistaken belief that an opinion is art criticism. Yup, I understand what I just wrote; art criticism is just an opinion; what else could it be? To put a very fine point on this, my issue is: “I didn’t get it, I didn’t like it, so it is bad.”

I believe a common secondary example of this thinking is a bit less thorny, so let me begin there.

THE MOST OVERRATED OPINION

A common discussion I come across on social media goes like this: “What is the most overrated [insert type of artist or artistic media] you can think of?” Inevitably the replies that follow are overwhelmingly answers to a different question. “What art do you dislike that is commonly considered high quality?” Do you think I’m splitting hair? Here is my #1 example of how this question is so broadly and completely misunderstood and how that ignorance betrays a misunderstanding of what art criticism is and why it is important: The Beatles. Every thread about overrated music/bands on the internet will contain a post about The Beatles and how they “sucked”; therefore, they are overrated. Do you see the problem? It is simply impossible to overstate (overrate) the importance that The Beatles and their music has had and continues to have on human culture! They changed the music and influenced modern culture to the point that a post-Beatles world is just the water that almost everyone swims in, impossible to recognize as anything other than reality. You don’t like The Beatles? Great, nobody says you have to. Your lack of enthusiasm for Beatles music doesn’t change the immense and vast impact that Beatles music has had on almost every facet of reality today. Nor does your opinion impact how influential that music has been on all music made from that point on. That being said, one might debate the musical merits of I Wanna Hold Your Hand all night long; a good song or not, it arguably shaped every piece of music that followed it and the reality you live in. You have the privilege of not enjoying that art, but declaring it “overrated” is so delusional it borders on clinical. I ask myself, how narcissistic does someone have to be to deny the importance of The Beatles based on their personal tastes? Of course, they are not all suffering from some serious god delusion; most of these folks are just answering that other question, “What do you hate that everyone else seems to like?” The term “overrated” is transformed into a more underrated definition of personal choice. This misunderstanding carries very little importance in casual conversation, and the world keeps spinning, no matter how many people think that John Lennon was a shitty guitarist. Applying this misunderstanding to new art attempting to get noticed is entirely different. This is the fundamental problem with this influencer style of criticism; it asks the wrong question at the top level.

DID I LIKE IT?

Will my followers like it? Will they dislike me if they disagree? These are poor aesthetics assessments, but they belong in a critically thorough process. If a critic is established with a readership, one hopes those readers follow along because of some shared aesthetic sensibilities. As I mentioned before, what really gets under my skin here is, “I didn’t understand it; therefore, it is bad.” In my opinion, conclusions like this are dangerous because they discourage creativity and are consistently debunked by the same interweb-shoutbox culture that supports this type of ignorance. How many thousands of gallons of digital ink have been spilled on Chris Nolan’s Inception from 2010? Why have so many people written so much about it? One answer is that so many people didn’t understand it, and others have been making a cottage industry of explaining it to them. Inception is a great example because, aside from a timeline that changes the value of a minute and a second, the story's ending seems to confuse people. After all, it has a deliberately ambiguous ending. Well, my friend, if you have made it this far, you will not be shocked when I tell you that it is positively ridiculous to expect stories to always end with some character living happily ever after. It is equally ridiculous to expect stories to be told in a linear narrative style and that events and characters will adhere to our fundamental understanding of reality. To dismiss art solely on the notion that it doesn’t fit into a personal definition of what art is expected to be is poor criticism. If the reader struggled with the narrative structure, they need to ask themselves whose fault, theirs or the writers? Declaring that a story is told in a confusing non-linear narrative without even an opinion as to why the author employed that structure is not a criticism; it is simply a fact. Understanding what an artist was attempting to do and judging their success is valuable criticism. A love of reading, a YouTube account, and maybe a degree in English do not make someone a book critic. If someone fails to contextualize the art being evaluated, they have failed completely to have a rigorous critical opinion. Of course, the critic is allowed to not like a piece of art; I am attempting to argue that this modern form of criticism is not being held accountable for a rigorous explanation of those opinions. This is, of course, a problem that lies more with the consumer of the opinions. I truly feel sorry for artists evaluated by these pretenders that should keep it all among friends.

THIS IS, OF COURSE, MY OPINION

Obviously, I’m on a little rant here, and I have an opinion. Maybe I’m shaking my fist and telling a bunch of people to get off my lawn? There are so many deep digressions surrounding this topic. Have you ever read an influential review of your own work that you felt was just uneducated claptrap? Do those kinds of things not matter in the grand scheme? I avoided the entire marketing concept here, which is a huge factor in selling art, but far more broad a topic than I can delve into. Do you follow any influencer-style art critics on social media? If so, what is the attraction for you? Beyond the reasons already stated, my passion for this topic extends to a much broader argument that this is an important fundamental shortcoming in modern thought. I have heard many people agree that there is a lack of rigorous critical thinking in our society, and I believe that the evidence for this is pretty obvious. It may be an unimportant distinction, but I believe there is a fundamental misunderstanding of critical thinking.