2013-01-13, 04:48 | Link #41 |
Romanticist
Join Date: Aug 2009
Age: 33
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I'm generally of the opinion that participation in long-winded discussions would require at least some degree of maturity on the part of all those involved. That includes having the gumption to recognize everything as opinions and conjectures, as well as not taking anything too seriously. Anyone who can't even do that much would be at fault for diving into the topic in the first place.
But then, I realize that my view is somewhat naive. It's silly of me to assume that an overwhelming majority of posters can separate emotional reactions from logical ones. There are even some who end up resorting to personal attacks. As such, I realize the practical limitations behind such an ideal. With that in mind, I often lace my opinions behind a simple "I believe" or "In my opinion". It's not all that hard to do anyway, so I figured, why not?
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2013-01-13, 04:51 | Link #42 | ||
:cool:
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Idaho
Age: 32
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As far as I'm concerned people can critique a series all they want if they've watched a majority of it. If someone has watched a portion of a series and stopped watching it because they didn't like it, they obviously have a specific reason for disliking it. At the same time, professionals often don't have the time to watch an entire series or play an entire game and thus have to give a rating based on a snippet of the whole thing. That makes their jobs a bit more difficult than we like to think, and makes it hard to give a proper critique. Often times those will be limited to very general things and what they watched, things like art style and the writing of the dialogue as well as the story. Quote:
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2013-01-13, 04:55 | Link #43 | ||
Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 41
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As you can surmise, I'm very concerned with keep conversations constructive and productive. But I know that some people are even more concerned with any insinuation that negative opinions are being stifled. That is not ever my intent. But in trying to understand people's sensitivity to this point, I've had to try to do better at explaining myself. And I still need to do better. Anyway, all that to say that if at least everyone from all points of view can think about this issue of tone (and understand where people are legitimately coming from), maybe be able to better understand each other. And if that could happen, I think it'd could only be a good thing. (Maybe it's just my upbringing, but as long as everyone's playing fair, sometimes you have a good argument and then everyone gets along better after that because they better understand where that person's coming from (even if you still disagree).) Quote:
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2013-01-13, 05:02 | Link #45 |
Gamilas Falls
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 46
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The question is more "why be a critic at all?' Why force oneself to go through all that just to post an opinion to people (without it being one's job)?
I don't watch a lot of anime specifically because I don't care for some types of shows. I don't go into around watching something I don't care for just so I can tell people it is bad and why it is bad. I generally consider that a waste of time, both mine and other people's (because they will be reading seemingly pages of criticisms from someone that knew they didn't like something and seems to only be spending their time picking though it to find more things they don't like). I seems illogical to do something one does not like intentionally, for one's free time, without compensation. Especially when there is no need to do so. If one is doing it for content on a blog or website I can almost see it, but again, why subject one's self to something you don't like? For readership? If it is one's job, that is fine, people do worse things they don't like for money than watching anime they don't care for. Not everything needs a "devil's advocate" as it was called.
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2013-01-13, 05:05 | Link #46 |
Japanese Culture Fan
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Planet Earth
Age: 33
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I think one of the issues here is that some people take other people's criticisms of anime too personally.
In other words, Mr. X likes an anime. Someone else criticizes that anime in an unusually harsh way, although they don't specifically use any personal insults against other people. Even so, Mr. X interprets the criticism to be an attack on him. I feel that this mentality is rather self-centered. And I do think tone has importance. Believe me, I've seen countless cases of people flaunting their opinions in extremely rough and dismissive ways that make Reckoner's criticisms look nice and considerate. And I've seen countless ad hominems, too. Once you hang around these people enough, you learn not to take what people say about entertainment too personally and trust your own judgments more. But there is compensation, maybe not of a monetary nature, but of a psychological one. One of Reckoner's last posts gave a few examples. |
2013-01-13, 05:08 | Link #47 | ||
Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 41
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I'm personally with you, though; unless you paid me, I doubt you could force me to watch shows I'm not enjoying. There are plenty of other things I could do instead that I'd enjoy more. Quote:
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2013-01-13, 05:11 | Link #48 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2011
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To be frank, stating your opinions as facts is both fun and useful for sparking some discussion, while just being nice and fluffy all the time contributes to the stagnation of a community.
This is why I go into 4chan's /a/ a lot, everyone there is free to word their opinions as they like, even if they're the most offensive pieces of text ever written. And most people there know that whatever wording anyone else had about a show, at the end of the day everything is a subjective opinion that doesn't need to be taken seriously. What the OP is implying is basically asking for people to adapt to the fact that many won't receive their opinions well if they state them so assertively. I think the problem lies not in the one who says the "offensive" comment, but on the many who fail to take it as a mere opinion and thus get offended by it. |
2013-01-13, 05:20 | Link #49 | |
Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 41
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There is a place for anonymous forums. But I think this should be a different kind of place.
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2013-01-13, 05:22 | Link #50 | |
Me at work
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(not that I havn't seen a well thought out debate on /a/ but it's not a place I go to expecting to find one)
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2013-01-13, 05:25 | Link #51 | |
:cool:
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Idaho
Age: 32
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It certainly is an issue. I often respond to people when they say something they disagree with, but I never tell them that they're wrong. Hopefully people aren't getting the wrong impression of me because of that. My fair warning to Asuki members who aren't accustomed to my antics: Be prepared. When I was younger, around when I joined Asuki, I used to think of people more anonymously. I think that's normal for people of that age. Now I consider everyone to be an individual with their own lives and reasoning. You grow out of that mentality that you are in or around the center of the universe when you start to realize how big the world is. People who are argumentative here don't care about how people feel about them, and the people who are cautious about offending others do. Age is a big part of it.
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2013-01-13, 05:43 | Link #52 | |
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
Moderator
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Similarly, I see this happen with a lot of anime critiquing. The episodic nature means they keep coming back, "reviewing" the episode (and either directly or not, the show as a whole) on a "art, sound, writing, etc" scale. At times, it reads like a blog critic. I've seen some incredibly dismissive comments based on first impressions that can't seem to be designed in any other way but to inform everyone that the poster is not a critical thinker. There's a huge lack of holistic thought in critical thinking, sadly. More than a lack of empathy, there's just a lack of thinking in terms of big picture and in writing to your audience. The problem with a critic who says the food tastes awful isn't that he only tried one of the five dishes, but that he offers that opinion to an audience that isn't him. There's no "I only tried one, but..." to suggest an open mind, and the language and tone don't mesh with an audience in the midst of discovery. So it comes off as abrasive, especially if he repeats it after each new dish. The other issue is that knowledge gaps exist. This goes back to my news reference. Those guys know more than I do about certain things. Or rather, they know more specific things. I couldn't discuss Okada if my life depended on it, or most voice actors, writers, or staff in general. So those things tend to go over my head. My interest in the show is often purely what is on screen, so that "meta" that might interest and influence another's opinion distracts from the information I am interested in discussing. Sort of like people discussing manga/novel info in an anime thread, it's just not something an anime only viewer wants to read or discuss. What is relevant to some, and not to others, etc. To some extent, writers have to accommodate their audiences by managing themselves and their readers. Unfortunately this isn't as easy as it sounds, but for some people it seems like they don't really try, either.
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2013-01-13, 06:18 | Link #53 |
Che! Che! Che!
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Brazil
Age: 34
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I don't think I have a lot to add, but in general I'd say I'm one person who will undeniably end up making some sort of claim when analyzing any sort of media I like/dislike. And I do this not because I'm trying to be rude or, hell, get into a fight, but simply because that is exactly what I feel will sum up my thoughts on it. Sure, usually said claims will come backed up by some reasons that led me to feel this way, but at the end of the day, it is still just an opinion and I do think that people, more often than not, aren't exactly able to judge just how much weight a simple opinion should have.
I mean, it's not about "not being taken seriously at all", but someone shouldn't feel the need to go on the defensive simply because another person said "Strike Witches makes extremely poor use of fanservice", no matter how big a fan of that series this person is. Again picking up on the Reckoner (sorry, you're now the guinea pig) case, I'm sure that if said Strike Witches fan made a rebuttal with the "I think it's great" line of reasoning and pointed out some of his reasons for thinking so, Reckoner wouldn't have flipped out at the guy and, instead, chances are they'd end up discussing things in a civilized way. I know it's happened with me quite a few times here before around here, especially when I get into those really fun animation debates with Kaioshin, hah.
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Last edited by Blue-kun; 2013-01-13 at 06:36. |
2013-01-13, 09:33 | Link #54 | |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
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Along with anonymity, I believe that the age and gender composition of the AS constituency plays a major role in fostering the tone of argumentation you find most repellent. Looking at the list of contributors in this thread, I don't see any of the women I know here represented. I doubt a conversation among a balanced mixture of men and women in their thirties or older would show the same tendencies to self-importance and bloviation that I find in the more obnoxious AS threads. That said, I find many of the conversations I read at ANN even worse with much more personal invective. There is a small contingent of members there who routinely attack each other at the drop of a hat. I know that similar alignments exist here, too, but they seem less common. Perhaps that is because I watch a small number of fairly non-mainstream shows and rarely watch anything that focuses on high school, moe~, or ecchi. I find my fellow commentators in threads about shows like Space Brothers or Tsuritama friendly, courteous and informative.
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2013-01-13, 13:40 | Link #55 | |
Operation sneaky sneaks
IT Support
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Hic et ubique
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However, in anime and its related matters, "evidence" is restricted to things that explicitly happen within a show (e.g. "YuruYuri featured a school play depicting Snow White"). Any discussion about these events is restricted to opinion (for instance, A may find the school play funny, while B may find the same play unoriginal). Thus, regardless of any reason and logic we may choose to field, at the end of the day, it's still an opinion because there is no right way to view something. This is why there are fields dedicated to the interpretation and analysis of literature: even experts may see things differently and consider dissimilar aspects of a work to be significant. As such, different people draw different conclusions, resulting in different opinions about what they might walk away from a particular scene/work/creation. This in part makes reading the different opinions amusing as well, as I gain insight into what the individual sees, but I never view it as "A is right and B is wrong". Thus, I would not regard anyone's opinion as being more correct/valid/important over anyone else's (and as such, you're also free to ignore my own speculated account on this phenomenon )
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2013-01-13, 13:43 | Link #56 | ||
On a mission
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I mean honestly, I've never received angry PM's telling me to stop praising a show. The opposite, however...
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2013-01-13, 13:49 | Link #57 | |
Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 41
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But yes, even this is a sort of anonymity, even if we're not all "Anonymous".
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2013-01-13, 16:32 | Link #58 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Yeah I agree about ANN. The talkback forum is the worst for sure.
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2013-01-13, 18:26 | Link #59 | ||
Princess or Plunderer?
Join Date: May 2009
Location: the Philippines
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2013-01-13, 21:18 | Link #60 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Where the Sky Touches the Sea
Age: 30
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On the main topic at hand, opinions in general are usually more well accepted if they have facts backing that opinion up because then the person with that opinion can argue using those facts supporting his opinion. The problem with criticism of almost any form of media is that most criticisms of "good/bad" media pieces have only more opinions backing them up meaning that there is no way to prove it true. Critics opinions of a specific show / media piece are usually held with a higher regard because they try to be as unbiased as possible (A good critic should do this at least) and logically present their opinions in the best way possible. So what makes for a good opinion then is when it can be backed by facts and if there is no true way to back your opinion by facts then present your opinion in the most unbiased and logical way possible.
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Last edited by Soverence; 2013-01-14 at 00:17. |
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