"What is eternal?
What is damned?
What is clay and what is sand?
Who to dis?
Who to trust?
Who to listen to?
Who to suss?"

Moving back to California, I’ve been trying to reestablish some links I had to some people in the media that I’ve neglected for about two years now. One of my best friends from High School is doing an internship for a "MAJOR NATIONAL NEWSPAPER" in her senior year of college, now working directly underneath one of their ombudsmen for the Lifestyle pages. We talked about the relevance of her position, and while those pages are intellectually sound, they’re basically quasi-entertainment about actual entertainment.

This is what criticism feels like.

Reading criticisms before choosing to spend money seeing a film, choosing to spend time watching a TV show, or choosing to spend brain cells on a new alcoholic beverage actually can be a lot of fun. Everybody loves chiding blows of snark and wit laying into projects that people have spent months, sometimes years of their lives risking success on. But, as was found in the moral of Ratatouille, the problem with critics is that their work and opinions are completely useless to a significant portion of their intended audience. Obviously, people having that pesky individuality thing is the cause of this, but unfortunately, a lot of people just go with the flow of popular opinion directly in spite of their personal tastes. This is partly their own idiot fault, but a lot of it has to do with how the media itself operates.

Sometimes critics polarize themselves around a project because of ideological reasons. Recent examples would include 300, V for Vendetta, and probably Harrison Ford’s upcoming movie, Crossing Over. Those reviews are fun to cheer for, and fun to hate, so they’re great padding for slow news cycles. But more often than not, critics all agree about what’s right or wrong about a project, and then just add some small personal twist on an element of a production to make their work seem individualistic. Those kinds of reviews are worth thumbing through if you support or oppose a project, and want to reconfirm your preconceptions about it, but unless the writers you regularly read are particularly talented (Joe Crowe!), you would probably be reading the same thing over and over and over again. And every review boils down to, basically, the acting is good or bad, the dialogue is good or bad, the pacing is good or bad, the story is good or bad, the action is good or bad, the score is good or bad, the special effects are good or bad, etc.

In the few cases where a critic’s opinions are strong enough to break from the herd, being unable to relate to a reviewer can ruin their reputation in the mind of the reader. Losing readers, or temporarily gaining them from antagonism, is a risky business. So many of the smaller named contributing writers for the paper my friend works for just read other people’s early reviews, and shoot for the safe consensus, rather than taking a risk at airing an unpopular opinion. Essentially, a herd of sheep media writers are leading a herd of sheep media consumers. That’s how Scooby Doo 2 made forty million dollars its opening weekend.

Knowing this, my friend and I agreed that we generally only trust opinion pieces on the internet, and put together a quick list of what to look for in your search for your own personal, entertaining and dependable critic.

Preferably, they will…

…understand your generation. As a kid, you might’ve been lucky enough to have a cool older cousin, or maybe even an awesome uncle who would introduce you to neat things you didn’t know about, but eventually, there is going to be a generation gap between what you like, and what someone ten years older than you likes – just as someone in their fifties probably wouldn’t take the advice of someone in their twenties. The problem that comes with being an established commenter in the media is time and age. Leonard Maltin, Roger Ebert and Gene Shallot’s opinions are not timeless, and while at this point in their lives, they are wise connoisseurs of great cinema, they’ve also become more irrelevant than ever in the internet age.

…share, or at least respect, your values. One of the reasons the United States is so fiercely divided along partisan lines is because of the sheer tonnage of acid spitting, cold hearted, asshole revealing propaganda being published every day, lashing out at ideologies that huge groups of Americans share and cementing a suicidal "us vs. them" mentality. You’re far more likely to agree with and enjoy the writing of someone who embraces their own bias rather than hiding behind a shield of "objective journalism," and also is willing to reinforces your own beliefs, than someone who challenges your opinions and thought processes. It is sad in a lot of ways, but most people are very closed minded ideologues, and nothing short of a thorough ass kicking will change that for many of us.

…have a writing style that separates them from High School newspapers. There is no excuse for reading an article from a writer who works from an outline to its completion. Whether you prefer critics who are brutally honest, batshit insane, or polite, if they’re boring, you have no reason to pay heed to their work. Unless, of course, you like boring. In which case, get the fuck off my blog.

…understand value. Asking sixty dollars for a videogame from its target audience is asking a lot. For some people (Disney employees), after taxes, asking for sixty dollars is like asking for ten hours of their working life. If a product isn’t worth that sort of financial investment, I want to know about it, rather than the quality of the product without the price tag. I realize that most critics get their review copies of games, films or whatever they’ve made a career critiquing for free – but we consumers don’t. Is seeing "Michael Clayton" worth a two minute drive to the movie theater, a ten dollar ticket, and two hours of my life? Or would I appreciate it more as as a three dollar Pay Per View rental in six months?

Well, probably neither, because it stars Batnipples. But I also know that I don’t want to see it because there are people who have taken that bullet for me: critics who love and hate the same things that I do, consistently. In the immortal words of David Bowie, "The pretty things are going to Hell, they wore it out, but they wore it well."