Unpopular opinions go here

[Bedrockgames]

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• There have been individual instances of panics, rushing to judgment, and the odd individual losing their job over 'problematic' positions. These individual instances are wrong and should be (and frankly are) called out as such. This is not a new phenomenon (see: the Red Scare), and something against which a society should be ever vigilant. It is a disservice to these occasions that there has been conflation of people exercising their right not to partake in someone else's creative works as somehow the same phenomenon.

Unfortunately when people have stood up to this, they too tend to get bullied, attacked and canceled. Lessons like the red scare are exactly why we should be concerned about these tactics when they emerge in gaming and other forms of entertainment and art. Public shaming, guilt by association, black listing, etc these all have long dark histories. And not doing the bolded. I always support peoples right not to like a game, movie, books, etc. No one has to participate in anything to show they are a good person. The problem is you have had lots of people going way, way beyond that, ruining peoples reputations, lying, trying to leverage the power of social media crowds to make it so other people have a harder time obtaining a work, getting works removed, and doing the things I enumerated above. And often it is over minutiae. And the ultimate aim of these tactics seem to be to drive people to unemployment or suicide

 

[overgeeked]

The free market of ideas is one of our society's greatest assets

If the internet has done anything, it has shown what nonsense the marketplace of ideas really is.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Market place if ideas is worth fighting for. You need the good ideas to contend with the bad ones. , It is the other behaviors that cause the problem

 

[Emberashh]

We have had this conversation before, and I have laid out my arguments before, but I think it is quite obvious there has been an issue with people trying to control, bully and cancel (and have been on the receiving end of it myself so I know it is real). Beyond that I am not going to get involved in another flame war on the issue. Needless to say I disagree sharply with the above characterization with what is going on. I am not opposed to people saying they dislike something, critiquing it, etc. That isn't what this is about

Important to recognize the internet tends to signal boost these people well beyond their actual prevalance.

Same basic idea being communicated when one says that Twitter or Reddit aren't reflective of reality.

Its unintuitive but even in an era of the internet when a lot of people are not hiding their true identities, the nature of it is providing a layer of obscurement that makes otherizing very easy, which in turn depresses the capability for people to practice empathy (not just have it mind, but actually practice it. Theres a difference) with each other.

But just as much, its also true that some things (and many people) do deserve that treatment, and we shouldn't confuse their resulting response as being legitimate just because it might be identical with the response of someone who didn't deserve it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I know I have had the experience of seeing a review labeled rotten or fresh, gone to actual review and found it to have been completely mislabeled due to a single line of text or something

Its worse than that; the overall score on Rotten Tomatoes is (or at least used to be, I haven't looked at their methodology in a few years) based on whether reviews are positive or negative; the more positive reviews, the higher score, the more negative reviews the lower. But as an example, it doesn't make a difference between a reviewer who thinks something is a below average piece of art and one who thinks its terrible. The consequence is that in some cases that score is deceptive as heck. If you have 40 reviews where almost all of them were "meh" on the low side and a couple were really positive will have a massively worse score then the inverse.

 

[billd91]

Its worse than that; the overall score on Rotten Tomatoes is (or at least used to be, I haven't looked at their methodology in a few years) based on whether reviews are positive or negative; the more positive reviews, the higher score, the more negative reviews the lower. But as an example, it doesn't make a difference between a reviewer who thinks something is a below average piece of art and one who thinks its terrible. The consequence is that in some cases that score is deceptive as heck. If you have 40 reviews where almost all of them were "meh" on the low side and a couple were really positive will have a massively worse score then the inverse.

That's the risk you take when you try to reconcile a bunch of different and often incompatible rating scales (thumbs up/down, 5 star scale, 4 star scale, letter grade, etc) into a single measure of "More Yay or Nay" that is the Tomatometer. I'd argue there's no real way for them to do better. Readers who are looking at Rotten Tomatoes just need to recognize that a higher Tomatometer rating means a greater number of positive reviews, not that they're necessarily more positive in their character (and vice versa).
Information literacy isn't just for the newspapers and news sites.

 

[overgeeked]

Counterpoint to my earlier post: bigots and hatemongers being deplatformed and driven out of various communities is an example of the marketplace of ideas working exactly as intended.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

That's the risk you take when you try to reconcile a bunch of different and often incompatible rating scales (thumbs up/down, 5 star scale, 4 star scale, letter grade, etc) into a single measure of "More Yay or Nay" that is the Tomatometer. I'd argue there's no real way for them to do better. Readers who are looking at Rotten Tomatoes just need to recognize that a higher Tomatometer rating means a greater number of positive reviews, not that they're necessarily more positive in their character (and vice versa).
Information literacy isn't just for the newspapers and news sites.

Bingo.

Complaining that an aggregator site isn't nuanced is ... well, it's like saying that water isn't wet.

The original reviews are there for people to read. As a general rule, I think that finding a critic who has a taste and sensibility that largely aligns with your taste and sensibility, and reading that critic's reviews.

Also? It's always good to find a critic with a great "voice." I always enjoyed, inter alia, Anthony Lane's reviews (New Yorker) even when I disagreed with them. They were fun to read as essays, even when he is wrong. Heck, sometimes he is better when he is wrong, gloriously so. I still remember his pan of No Country For Old Men which wasn't just wrong, it was probably the most inane, overblown, sanctimonious POS I have ever read, and was a hoot, too.

 

[payn]

Its worse than that; the overall score on Rotten Tomatoes is (or at least used to be, I haven't looked at their methodology in a few years) based on whether reviews are positive or negative; the more positive reviews, the higher score, the more negative reviews the lower. But as an example, it doesn't make a difference between a reviewer who thinks something is a below average piece of art and one who thinks its terrible. The consequence is that in some cases that score is deceptive as heck. If you have 40 reviews where almost all of them were "meh" on the low side and a couple were really positive will have a massively worse score then the inverse.

You have to put things into context. The tomoatoer is basically a generalization, which you should use as a starting point. Just because a film is "fresh" doesn't mean its going to work for everyone. I will say that good films, in a general executed sense, dont get slammed by meh reviews. With generalizations, there are of course, exceptions to the overall ratings.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Counterpoint to my earlier post: bigots and hatemongers being deplatformed and driven out of various communities is an example of the marketplace of ideas working exactly as intended.

Counterpoint to your counterpoint: Fishmongers being de-platformed and driven out of various communities is why I can't get good gas station sushi.

Or so I say to myself while I am praying to the porcelain god.