My Thoughts on Nitpicking

Hello everyone and welcome to “My thoughts on...”

This is a series of editorials that I will be doing during the dreadful pony drought of 2013, a time during which Season 4 is being produced and people might or might not jump out of the boat that is the Brony fandom. I use the word “editorials” with a lot of freedom, because they are not complete editorials per se. They are more opinion articles than editorials. That’s the reason why they are titled “My thoughts on...”

They won’t always be about pony, though. Sometimes they will be about movies, books, artwork, people, and other subjects. But since I became sort-of-well known in the fanbase for doing reviews on pony, I guess most of these articles will be about our beloved colourful miniature equines, and everything that surrounds them. So, if that sounds interesting to you, feel free to check the article after the page break.

A few years ago a new trend started to get popular on the internet. For years, for decades, we have watched in our TV’s how critics and reviewers in general torn our main sources of entertainment (movies, TV shows, books, videogames) to pieces, ripping them apart and basically telling you why you shouldn’t waste your time reading, watching or playing them. But then the internet appeared, everyone loved it, and what was the second thing people did with it (the first one being looking for porn)? They went and posted reviews of their favourite things on it. This went on and on for as long as one can remember as it is in our nature to share our opinion, if not downright shoving it down the readers’ throats. We also like to think our opinion is the right one, no matter how objective we try to be. We can try and see the big picture, but we are not Vulcan, we can’t hide our emotions guys, and if we hate something that hate is going to be visible. That’s why the early reviews happened to be nothing but an endless circle-jerk of pure hate.

That was one of the reasons why reviewing on the internet wasn’t that very popular and things didn’t seem to really catch on. I think the only internet reviewer who really hit it big time first was Harry Knowles from “Ain’t it cool news!” but this is mostly because, well, the best way to describe his style of reviewing is that he loved everything. That’s fine, I have no problems with that, but I really can’t remember anything negative coming from him. The guy loved “Van Helsing” for Pete’s sake. I like a lot of stuff. I love the Michael Bay “Transformers” movies and “Aliens VS Predator: Requiem”, but I don’t like “Van Helsing”! This goes to proof that being overly positive is as bad as being overly negative. And that’s why I am going to talk about internet reviewers, and most specifically, how people misinterpret this concept. It will just be a paragraph, so don’t fret.

 

I think I will bring up the most popular example, the one that I think brought it all up and made the concept popular. In 2005, James Rolfe created “The Angry Videogame Nerd”. Back then it was called “The Angry Nintendo Nerd”, but after Nintendo contacted him about using their name in his title, he changed it and thus opened the door to review more than just Nintendo games. This character he created was a parody of the stereotype that people have about gamers. He is angry, he is asocial, he swears a lot, he just plays videogames, he lives in a basement, and he is obsessed with finishing each and every game he plays. He made the concept very popular because of how interesting his takes were on each game he reviewed. He was fun, he had the exact amount of dirty jokes, and he knew how to shot a video with good production values and really well planed direction.

He did a great job.

So of course, people started to come out of the woodwork to follow on his footsteps. Now internet reviewing was hip, they all wanted to jump in on it. They all wanted a piece of the cake. Some of them are actually really good, like Doug Walker’s Nostalgia Critic, or Noah Antwiler’s Spoony One. But these good reviewers are very few compared to the worryingly huge and dreadful bunch of internet reviewers that are not just horrible, but offensive and unnecessary. I’m talking about people like Yahtzee or Movie Bob, people who are not reviewers, who don’t tell you both the good and the bad of what they are reviewing, people who just focus on every single, solitary, goddamn negative aspect of every videogame, movie or TV show and dwell and bask on it like a pig on a mud puddle. These people are disgusting. They are not objective, they don’t see the big picture; they are not fair; they just want to rip apart whatever it is they are watching or playing because it attracts people. They do it because they think it’s funny to see a monkey take his own shit and fling it at something else.

And these people are everywhere. They are all over the place, and they are a plague. Their only purpose in life is nitpick the hell out of things. You know when you are in a clothes shop, you are trying on a new pair of trousers, and this self-entitled bitch looks at you and says “That makes you look like a barrel”? Yeah, those people. Or when you go buy a videogame and this backwards-cap wearing douchebag looks at it and says “You like Mass Effect? If you want a good RPG buy a Final Fantasy game”. Or when you are buying a movie and this greasy-hair, glass pushing prick looks at it and says “You are buying a Pokémon film, that’s because you are a kid and never grew up”. These are the people that wave their opinions like they are the norm. These people think that what they say is the right thing, and what you say is wrong. There are only a few things where one can be absolutely right or wrong. One can be right or wrong when it comes to science, or math. You can’t say that one plus one equals three because that’s wrong. However, you can’t say the Phantom Menace is worse than Revenge of the Sith, because that’s an opinion, and opinions are never right or wrong. They are just opinions. It’s right to say that Steven Spielberg directed Schindler’s List, because he actually directed it. But you can’t say that his best work is Jurassic Park because that’s an opinion.

 Opinions are not facts.

This is what those nitpicking internet critics don’t get into their thick skulls. That’s why nitpicking is something I hate. I don’t like nitpicking at all, and I am trampling over my own words because I am nitpicking the fact that I hate nitpicking, but here is the difference. I never say nitpicking is wrong. I just say nitpicking is something I hate to see, especially when it’s done in my general direction. I don’t mind people telling me how to spell a word correctly, or phrase something better. I appreciate that. What I don’t like is when people go out of their ways to over-analyze and criticize a cartoon about pastel coloured horses. I have seen people within the community spend too much time trying to make sense out of this cartoon and I am still trying to figure out why they do this. I take they do it because it can be entertaining, but then why do they get bent out of shape when somebody says their opinion is different?

That’s not what we are here for people. We are here to have fun, share opinions and tell each other whether or not we liked an episode and why. We are not here to discuss what the currency is in Equestria, what kind of magic spell-caster Twilight Sparkle is, what the logic is behind Pinkie Pie’s fourth-wall-breaking powers, or why Rarity didn’t have an episode during 2012. We are here to have fun, tell jokes, give me advice on how to improve my reviews, and basically not being like those internet reviewers. This is a pit-stop away from all that cynicism. That’s my intention with this website, and if I have to delete a comment and moderate somebody, I’ll do it. I have had to delete vindictive comments ever since I started doing this. I still leave anonymous comments open because some of my most faithful followers want to remain anonymous and I don’t want to strip their right to comment on my blog. And if you still want to post an overanalyzing, negative, vindictive comment in my blog the worst thing I will do is just delete it, so if you don’t want to stop posting those comments that’s alright, I’ve got you covered.

Bottom line, share your opinion but don’t be an asshole about it. It’s possible. If I can do it so can you.