i'm not a fandom person, nor an artist - well, i am an amateur poet and essayist; otherwise, not my circus and not my monkeys. why do i feel the need to talk about it? recently i've had a conversation about so called 'cringe culture' back in the 00s, and negativity that appeared in the public sphere - culture surrounding encyclopedia dramatica (which most people around my age grew up on...), youtube cringe compilations, whatever that. a lot of that negativity would concern people who made bad art or wrote bad fanfic - indeed, there was a lot of noise about mary sues, and other marks betraying lack of creativity in the author and bad technical skill. besides that, for whatever reason, signs of not treating the written texts seriously, such as self inserts. a lot of it would be in bad faith, and provoked protests as bigoted and malicious.
while these protests were overwhelmingly warranted, unfortunately the public has no sense of balance and around 2013-2020 we could observe a swing in the opposite direction - particularly in the circles which were the most affected by it, so communities consisting in large of part of autists and lgbt people, and these of amateur fandom creators; there was a level of overlap, though i mostly observed it from outsider perspective. around that time, the liberal political scene descended into an obsession with positivity and moral hysteria; it was the culture of 'snowflakes' and 'participation trophies' mocked by conservatives. naturally, there's a lot of hypocrisy in this conservative mockery - just look at proud american veterans of the lost vietnam war - but nevertheless, some aspects of what they pointed to did exist in the scene that would deem itself liberal or leftist. it was a culture of unconditional affirmation of the individual, which - aiming to fight actually harmful bigotry - lacked nuance and critical thinking, and deemed all negative input a 'bad thing', even just on the mental level; thought crime and thought policing are, anyway, certain aspects of that culture and play into anti-intellectual attitudes.
the culture said there's no 'bad art' and 'bad writing', and one absolutely should never-ever express holding negative opinion on whatever the other created, everyone should just be having fun with no concern for technical standards, and criticism equals being a hater, unless it's on political or moral ground - once again, a tendency deeply anti-intellectual, particularly excluding negativity grounded in standards that are objective rather than subjective, and aren't based in intellectual emotion. i have to say, the left hates facing demands, and being expected to live up to something. validation of everything means less improvement of whatever work, and also more clutter of the public sphere; in longer perspective it also means death of valuable technical standards, and a wider understand of 'quality'. it would be absolute victory of the mediocre, and not something i would ever stand for. does that mean i think we should go back to mocking teenagers for drawing sparkledogs, though? well, not really. i personally find sparkledogs ugly, but it wouldn't be the way.
well, first of all, some stuff is just low effort and ugly and not in a way that speaks to the audience either (subjective, but still), some stuff is technically flawed - goes for things that have technical rules - some aspires to be something it isn't and doesn't have the range, some stuff is repetitive and unoriginal. i don't think it benefits anyone to pretend otherwise. i do like standards. i hold myself to them and i hold others too. i demand from myself and from others. however...
not everything is asking for judgement. some of the problems of the old approach concerned subjecting literally everyone and everything to strict judgement, often maliciously, to fit the pre-existing aim to express negativity and mock them. what does 'asking for judgement' mean? generally speaking, if someone is writing or drawing purely for fun, they don't have to aim for it to be technically perfect, or original. there's no need as it's not for external audience, or it is for other people within the same circles who just treat it as fun; there's no reasons to subject it to standards other a desire to be a dick. criticising someone who's not aspiring for criticism and not trying to win acclaim is just putting pointless negativity into the world. literally "no one asked". would it benefit the state of mainstream media? no. would it make someone feel like shit? yes. there's no need for external criticism when it comes to things meant to benefit to creator themself, their friends or a small circle of other amateurs who enjoy it as is; there's no call for judgement if you're not part of the intended audience. one of the problem is approaching things from perspectives they were not meant for; and that includes approaching a self-aware hobby as if it had aspirations to be high end art. it's demanding things not suitable for context and genre - included things such as picking on unrealistic scenarios with kids saving the world in ya novels, which are meant to be a fantasy for kids about people like themselves getting to save the world. holding bad fic and bad art made by people who have no intention to reach wider audiences or create 'real'/'serious' literature or art to the same standards as professionals is unprofessional in itself. therefore: failure to keep the criticism suitable for context, and failure to keep the criticism to these who asked for it - obviously, if you're not part of the intended audience, your input isn't highly valued. that's fine.
of course, the biggest problem here is malice; but malice isn't really to be discussed, people are dicks, have been dicks and will remain dicks, end of. the solution for that is correctly identifying when someone is being one; the solution for that is not deeming all negativity to be inherently malicious. there are some forms of critical activity which can be broadly painted as malicious in nature - one of them is the case i described above, of unsolicited criticism by a recipient who isn't the target. another case is criticism towards things that don't bear criticism - here i'm mostly thinking about criticising kids. another problem in the 00s was aforementioned negative culture often targeting beginner creators, including teenagers.
kids are allowed to not have the skill adults have. they're learning. they're not going to be perfect in technicalities and they're going to have an infantile view of the plot, and their characters will lack nuance. their art will be bad. why? they're kids. criticising them otherwise than in good faith to help them improve and grow is being a dick. criticising kids in a beneficial way means paying attention to one's wording and context. it definitely leaves out mockery and any other manifestations of malice, and assumes a positive attitude, meaning: a focus on what they can improve rather than what is flawed. it's just a matter of wording and attitude, but it's significant.
picking on kids maliciously is something i despise, because it's going for an easy target; anyone, including completely mediocre cretins, can look smart next to a child if they are an adult. if anything, it's a testimony to inability of showing off one's intelligence in a fair contest. going for someone weaker deliberately to show off your knowledge or wit and sarcasm or whatever is proof of weakness; going for someone weaker deliberately to show off your knowledge or wit and sarcasm is weak. intellectual stuff if very much a rivalry, if you're picking on kids you're weak and i despise you. yes, it's dumb and bad by adult standards. it's bad because it's written or drawn by a kid. kids are dumb and have no skill. if you discourage them now, they won't make something good in the future, and maybe they would. adults criticising kids in unwarranted or malicious ways can count is an example of universal dickery. children's art doesn't bear criticism - it doesn't stand for it; they don't have an equal stand. then again, adults who indulge for fun but have no aspiration for wider acclaim do stand criticism and one can criticise them, but if unasked for, it tends to be unnecessary and irritating.
however! if a 30 year old is going to write a bad book and advertise it as great queer literature, and it sucks, i'm going to very much tell them it sucks. if someone is seeking to promote a mediocre book, they're also exposing themselves to external input - once again, if someone is promoting something to me, then i'm allowed to express my opinion on it; it is not inherently being a dick. portraying it that way is down to lack of humility in adult, aspiring creators who refuse to improve and learn technicalities, since that's mostly what it is about - learning technical rules and skills is boring and takes a lot of effort; so it's something people not used to ever standing a demand refuse to tolerate, and will call you a hater for disagreeing with their ego.
very funny thing; consider upholding the field's standards if you want to participate in it on a professional level. they exist for a reason, and you will make the field worse if you ignore them. you can change them if you find a better way, you can experiment if you're able to make up for whatever element you ignored with your other skills and strong points... if you have any. if you don't have any... that's a problem. besides, even for these who prefer to experiment learning the technical rules first tends to be the better way - things come off different from those who don't know how to do something versus those who do, but used the skills they've learnt to find an alternative way. you would want to at least know what you're ignoring. remember, too, if you're aspiring to reach a wider audience of strangers you're also opening yourself up to their input, and you would do better learning to deal with it - including sorting criticism into constructive and malicious; you'd do better to learn to recognize and ignore malice, and consider and learn from from constructive negativity..
personally, i want to learn methodology and statistics properly before i do my first 'real' research project - to make sure it's free of technical mistakes. if something is bad but pretends not to be i'm going to say it. amen. there's a very clear barrier between criticism that's solicited and that's unsolicited, and one that's appropriate to the art or text versus one that isn't; there's also constructive and malicious criticism, as well as correct and incorrect. refusing to deal with any negativity is a big problem in some circles nowadays. refusing to sort and analyse the negativity and acknowledge differences between mean malice and all the rest is part of that.
another problem: lack of willingness to separate one's individual negative opinion from an action of expressing it and upsetting someone. i have seen people be attacked for speaking of something negatively in private, not expressing that negativity to the author; on that i want to make it clear that anyone is allowed to hold a negative opinion on anything, for any reasons; these reasons can be more or less personal and more or less rational. yes, expressing unsolicited negativity to the author often reaps no benefit, but upsets someone unnecessarily; but expressing negativity about something on one's private website or other outlet (private, that is - not someone with a remarkable presence and community of fans, since that kind of counts as a public expression), or in a circle of friends, et cetera, normally does not harm the author in any material way. it is thought policing to hunt down negativity that the person concerned isn't exposed to. shittalking will always exist, and serves as a social function, as well as function for one's self-expression. if it's victimless then it's victimless. once again, i would say that laughing at a child's bad art in a private conversation is lowlife behaviour, but it's harmless. negativity is part of human experience; protection from unnecessary negativity means protection from exposure to it, from action, not from thought.
anyways, it is said 'let people like things', and i fully agree with that; i would like to add something from myself, however, which is: let people dislike things too. let people dislike things for no reason, let people dislike things based on personal subjective associations; let people dislike things because of technicalities. let people dislike whatever as long as they don't rub that into the face of the creator who isn't asking for input or doesn't bear it.
once again, not a fandom person myself, but enough of an observer - a lot of 'discourse' in these spaces, in my humble (duh!) opinion, originates from the fact that dislike of something based on intellectual or personal reasons and speaking of it negatively isn't tolerated; thus, in order to be allowed to dislike something, they must prove it's politically or morally wrong, on an objective level. really harmful for healthy discussion, as it pushes the whole question into the sphere of morality and objective black-or-white, which is often not necessary; just let people dislike things, that's all.
that was kotte, a hater, speaking.