Uncritical Mass
Good GUARDIAN piece talking about how influencers (aided and abetted by the studios, naturally) are undermining film criticism.
I'm not going to recap it here, since one can simply read the article to see what they're talking about, but I will say that the problems indicated are also endemic in book review territory (minus only the incentives provided by the movie studios).
Book reviewers are definitely over a barrel these days, running up against book boosters (the sea of 5-star reviews on Goodreads being Exhibit A, naturally).
Actual reviewers (who, *gasp* might not like a book) run up against the wrath of book boosters (who can always be counted on those 5-star hyperbolic reviews).
Is everything awesome? Are all books stellar?
No. Hell, even the book boosters must know they're full of shit when they cart out bushels of 5-star reviews.
What book boosterism does is create an ocean of false positives, a virtual red tide of hype that makes it harder for actually good work to stand out, or (perhaps worse) for readers to get burned by junk books presented as 5-star extravaganzas, which puts them out on taking the "risk" of reading someone new (or someone who hasn't been hyped).
The goal of book boosterism is to sell books, obviously, and involves friends, confederates, and allies to boost each other's books in hopes of catching reader interest.
The important safeguards of objectivity and honesty are jettisoned by book boosterism. No book booster will ever honestly say "Why do I claim to love this book? Because my virtual friend wrote it, and I love them!"
Maybe because I've worked a long time in worlds where conflict of interest (COI) was always a consideration, I see book boosterism as a raging COI wildfire.
Perhaps, in the end, it doesn't matter -- with a very few exceptions, boosted books don't ever get the kind of elevation that actually makes them matter. And the book boosters just flop around, flinging 5-star boosts mindlessly, making each other feel good about their respective works.
But I think of those ponds choked with bright green duckweed (usually a result of fertilize runoff, it seems), turning into those gross, rancid things, because the duckweed blocks the sunlight and kills off the algae needed to keep the pond clean naturally.
Book boosters are like digital duckweed, killing off actual book reviewing, and that's a disservice to all writers and readers, whether they know it or not.
I'm not going to recap it here, since one can simply read the article to see what they're talking about, but I will say that the problems indicated are also endemic in book review territory (minus only the incentives provided by the movie studios).
Book reviewers are definitely over a barrel these days, running up against book boosters (the sea of 5-star reviews on Goodreads being Exhibit A, naturally).
Actual reviewers (who, *gasp* might not like a book) run up against the wrath of book boosters (who can always be counted on those 5-star hyperbolic reviews).
Is everything awesome? Are all books stellar?
No. Hell, even the book boosters must know they're full of shit when they cart out bushels of 5-star reviews.
What book boosterism does is create an ocean of false positives, a virtual red tide of hype that makes it harder for actually good work to stand out, or (perhaps worse) for readers to get burned by junk books presented as 5-star extravaganzas, which puts them out on taking the "risk" of reading someone new (or someone who hasn't been hyped).
The goal of book boosterism is to sell books, obviously, and involves friends, confederates, and allies to boost each other's books in hopes of catching reader interest.
The important safeguards of objectivity and honesty are jettisoned by book boosterism. No book booster will ever honestly say "Why do I claim to love this book? Because my virtual friend wrote it, and I love them!"
Maybe because I've worked a long time in worlds where conflict of interest (COI) was always a consideration, I see book boosterism as a raging COI wildfire.
Perhaps, in the end, it doesn't matter -- with a very few exceptions, boosted books don't ever get the kind of elevation that actually makes them matter. And the book boosters just flop around, flinging 5-star boosts mindlessly, making each other feel good about their respective works.
But I think of those ponds choked with bright green duckweed (usually a result of fertilize runoff, it seems), turning into those gross, rancid things, because the duckweed blocks the sunlight and kills off the algae needed to keep the pond clean naturally.
Book boosters are like digital duckweed, killing off actual book reviewing, and that's a disservice to all writers and readers, whether they know it or not.
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