CyclonatorZ

Okay, might as well use the old "quote and then add personal comments in bold" method, seeing as I have a lot to reply to.

No, I'm saying nothing of the sort. I'm saying what I said, which I thought was clear... but let's review.

 

1) The goal of entertainment is to enjoy what you can. This should be everybody's top priority. (Some make a mistake, apparently, here by acting as if the goal of entertainment is to find stuff to whine about.)

 

2) Everybody has different tastes, and that's not only fine, but good.

 

3) Fully constructive criticism should focus on what will please the majority (at least on issues that are totally subjective, as most things with Bionicle are, and most other style questions), as opposed to what will merely please the person speaking.

 

4) Constructive criticism is also helped by explaining constructively what you personally want -- and if you are displeased by something, don't just whine about it, suggest better alternatives. Even if you're not thinking about the majority, suggesting alternatives is still very important. It could be that what you suggest is worth trying out, and might even please the majority better too.

 

5) Reporting "just for the sake of saying so" what pleases you and doesn't please you is good too, as long as you keep it reasonable and respectful of others, and don't treat your personal taste as a "LEGO should" opinion. For example, topics asking your favorite character, least favorite, favorite set, etc. These are purely "your personal reaction" questions, and that is good.

 

6) Finally, if you are intitially displeased by something, but as far as you can tell, it's merely a style thing, you might wanna try out my taste reset bars exercise, or something along those lines, to give the new thing a fair chance. You might actually like it. And that would be good all around -- you are happier, you don't need to communicate displeasure to others (although people often say something like "I didn't like this at first but it grew on me" etc.), and you certainly don't need to get into all the illogical mixing of "LEGO should change this because I personally dislike it" stuff.

 

But of course that's totally up to the individual to decide for themselves.

 

Ah, good to see that's cleared up. Actually, I completely agree on all of these points - however, I would add that there's usually a difference between style and quality. Just about any style of media can be used in a satisfactory way - but not all shows, movies, and other products succeed in their quest to satisfy the market. The reason for this, of course, depends on a lot of things, including how well it was marketed and how engaging it is to the target audience.

 

The only case in which that might be partly true is when people make blanket statements that people infer to mean "LEGO should" opinions, when they didn't actually mean to say that. In that case the advice is NOT "just plain don't criticize" -- it's "word things a little more clearly; when you're just talking your own personal taste, make it clear by saying something like 'Personally, I don't like...' etc.".

 

Sometimes people actually were implying LEGO should opinions with that. That too is a mistake -- the answer to it is, what LEGO should do doesn't depend on only one person. But that does NOT mean there's anything wrong with simply saying "I personally didn't like this".

 

Agreed, and this is the way I currently approach posting when related to lego and my other interests. I'm not the kind of person that makes statements like "this set is awful, how can anyone like it?" - instead, I phrase statments like "Personally, I feel this is one of the worst sets TLC has made recently," which, while still showing my utter dislike of a set, doesn't discount other people's personal tastes.

 

The problem is that people often act as if they're omniscient or telepathic, and assume things are shoddy or poorly made, when they're really not -- they're just not aimed at that person. Aimed at someone else, with different tastes.

 

But this is beside the point. Criticizing is not wrong. Even if you're making logical errors in your complaint, if you don't post it or say it, nobody can see it to point out your mistake and help you improve. Posting the complaint, IMO, is more important than having everything right about it, 'cuz then we can debate from there. If you ARE right that it's shoddy production, then the debate will bear that out. (Of course, if there's a lack of objectivity in the debate, it is pretty useless, but anyways. ) On the other hand, any advice we can give to how to better think through complaints BEFORE posting is helpful too.

 

 

Criticizing with a wackily negative attitude is wrong, however, yes (and against BZP rules). But even with this, it's not like it's a crime -- if you post it, that also gives us a chance to help you (generic "you", I mean), which is better than "you" just quietly stewing. Especially on BZP, a warning for a minor flame is better for "you" than letting it build up to a banworthy offense later. And what is wrong there is merely the attitude. Not the act of criticizing itself. The way it is done. Flaming instead of mere criticism.

 

Again, totally agree. In fact, one of the big criterias I use for deciding whether to become a member of another site or forum is seeing whether respect of other's opinions is the general practice. If longtime members come off as rather arrogant and assertive, then I don't feel it's worth my time to discuss stuff with them, as I have neither the patience nor logical genius to engage in a sucessful debate. This is actually the reason I left one particular board about a year ago, and why I've taken a break from another.

 

XD I'd probably just laugh. And then I'd say something like, "Well, I don't know anything about Hannah Montana, so I can't judge." XP Or "whatever floats your boat" or the like.

 

And, you mean in real life? In real life, there's no time to explain all this stuff about personal taste. And I doubt a twelve-year old girl would want to hear it, lol. (Depends on the person.) On the 'net though I might briefly sum up the basics about personal taste.

 

Yeah, I know that was kind of a silly example.

 

Can you backtrack on this part and explain what you mean by the pronouns? What's the "this" of "this kind of extreme" there? I have said nothing even remotely extreme, so I'm a little confused by that statement. And what's the "it"?

 

BTW, although as I said I can't judge since I know virtually nothing about Hannah Montana, it's plain as the nose on Gimli's face that HM is targeted at a different audience than LotR.

 

If there's some kind of moral objection to HM, then okay, but I have no idea.

 

Also, what do you mean about laziness and lack of originality?

 

Okay, let me explain what I mean by this. Basically, I've come to a point where I generally dislike the current way the entire marketing system is set up when relating to media. To me, the biggest problem with TV, movies, and other forms of entertainment today is not that they're necessarily low quality or unoriginal, but that they generally are marketed to specific groups of people. These days, aside from perhaps Pixar, the vast majority of companies prefer to make specific products for specific groups of people, rather than focusing much of their effort on making products that people of all types can enjoy. Hannah Montana is an excellent example of this - being a sitcom aimed at pre-teen and elementary age girls, the producers have have made absolutey no effort to make it appeal to any people besides those groups. The reason for this is because, no matter what the quality of the show and scripts, girls will still watch the show in droves, and thus bring in tons of money regardless of effort.

 

That bothers me, because I don't see why entertainment has to be that way. You see, since targeted marking allows people to make tons of money without necessarily making a high quality product, there's absolutely no desire to make shows that appeal to all sorts of audiences. Instead of spending effort making shows that can be promoted across the spectrum, producers would rather just focus on agressive marketing directed towards one group. In fact, the opening of tastes actually applies to this as well! The belief that target audiences don't need to be challenged to try new products leads to producers giving people the same old types of shows and movies, rather than innovating. Comic books are an excellent example of this - most comic book writers today don't make any effort in making them appeal to women as well as men, as they assume that "women don't want to read comic books." Thus, they instead focus on pleasing their largely male audience in whatever way possible, even if it involves questionable moral content that pulls at their natural reactions to "certain things." (if you catch my drift).

 

Now, keep in mind - I'm not necessarily condemming partisan entertaiment, and I realize that certain things are far harder to market to a wide audience than others. The whole reaosn why TLC markets Bionicle just to young boys is that girls largely won't find battling robots appealing (although there are some exceptions). However, I do feel that our current society has gotten far too used to that kind of marketing, to the point where its accepted that certain types of entertaiment will only appeal to certain groups. For producers, this means that there's no need to make Hannah Montana appeal to people besides young girls and to make comic books appeal to people besides adult males - and for the consumer this leads to prejudice against people who don't follow the norm.

 

By and large, however, the biggest problem with this outlook on entertainment is that it breeds laziness. The whole reason that we see so many productions with Batman as a title character and so many Disney shows revolving around young musical stars is not because they're new and unique, but because they will sell no matter what. With instant success almost undoubtedly guarenteed if producers use well established characters and concepts, they often feel no need to innovate and try new things, or even to try to improve on what has already been established. Of course, this isn't always the case, and there's still innovation every year, but not nearly as much as their could be. And that's really sad.

 

I'll post some more comments later, but I have to cut it off right now.