Difficult does not mean easy
Lately I have been reassessing the whole enterprise of being a cultural critic ... needless to say, I am the last person that should be considered one ... really now
I don't understand how it is that lately I've noticed that in general people who do criticism on their blogs are almost universally so entirely negative or positive that it makes you wonder what really is the value of having your opinion published on this vast expanse of anonymity known as the Internet
What is their contribution, if anything ....?
Today I saw this blog entry ... and mind you, I have been following this blogger for somewhat over a year, maybe going on two now. And his blog mainly focuses on providing reviews of this and that, he's a freelance writer by trade, I believe
Well, it seems like for him, nothing is up to snuff ... nothing rates ... everything sucks. At first, I believed that he was a person whose opinions had some degree of integrity ... but now I realize that he is just a critic, and just another naybob naysayer who overestimates his own opinion, his own objectivity, and well quite frankly he has no appreciation of anything
Truly he is a person who doesn't appreciate the value of anything ... that every expression, whether it is art, music, a videogame, a book, a film, a cartoon, what have you ... took someone a long time to do, and probably a lot of training and practice and sweat and effort ... and all he can do is piss on them, over and over
There is something that I have held to myself for a while but now I think it becomes more and more true ... sometimes these freelancers are just hacks that can't do what a limited numbers of others can do so they let out their own personal suck-stration on the work of others who have managed to commercialize their work
It's funny because rather than enjoy something for what it is, or on the other hand dislike something for what it is ... it always is dislike something for what it is not, or find some kind of hallelujah joy over finding FLAWS, glitches, bugs, etc. in something
In the final analysis, I guess there are a lot of angry, frustrated types who talk smack about others' successful creative endeavors and call it constructive criticism or review ... I say to these people look in the mirror, because the reason why you can't enjoy anything is because at some fundamental level you cannot enjoy yourself ... and the more tragic aspect of it is how seriously these people take themselves
And that is a sad place to be