The Future of Criticism?
More people visit Itunes than CHUD.com and most of the sites like us.
Well, there’s no site like us. We’re a peacock of a different beak, but
there are other sites who offer fine criticism of films, DVDs, and the
like. Some don’t actually offer much of anything I must admit. Fuck it, we’re amazing but I digress…
More
and more I’m noticing that places like Itunes and Amazon put a lot of
stock in their customer reviews, amazing missives that range from
seriously planted (“Fool’s Gold is this generation’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s“) to idiotic (“UR dumb if U Dont buy Holes“) to the textual incarnation of Cthulhu-brought madness (“Don’t see that movie with Alec Baldwin because he’s fat in it!”).
On one hand it’s funny. Here’s Itunes’ amazingly dense and heavily researched Semi Pro film criticism:
But
more realistically, it’s lame. Eventually, the lazy universe of people
(yourself excluded once you stop dipping your sausage link in that
mayonnaise jar) will just read and ingest the text considered reviews
by the average Joe and take it as something of merit. Sometimes it is.
Most of the time it isn’t.
If
these sites were smart, they’d license the reviews from reputable
sources and syndicate them (or snippets that linked back to the
source), moving the often uninformed opinions of anyone with an Itunes
or Amazon account to a place relegated to non-editorial content.
Talkbacks, message boards, a GULAG. Anything. There have been a few
instances recently where someone I know made a decision on what to
download or rent based on a comment they read on Amazon.com.
It’s lunacy I tell you! How can a little ol’ site like this compete with the opinion of IG-88bcg@compuserve.ca?
– Nick Nunziata is a huge fan of WAR’s reviews.
Before
I go, here’s the latest thing I’m adding to the blog. Each day I’ll
have a song, a piece of artwork, a photo, a Mary Worth, or something to
further justify your click and to give the trolls a little more ammo.
Today,
an amazing piece of work called ALIEN HAPPENINGS, rendered to
perfection by myself. Sotheby’s will be auctioning this at their next
elite and phenomenal auction. Starting bid: $55,000. Behold:
