Top 6 biggest mistakes the critics and reviewers make.

Fuck the critics. Why? Before I trust somebody's opinions I need to see their credentials and most critics just don't have any credentials.

In order to be, let's say, a professional movie critic you don't need to be a movie maker or a scriptwriter; you just need to be friends with the editor of the magazine you write for. Not good enough. With such low standards for employment, critics and reviewers tend to make lots of mistakes. So here they are, the mistakes the hack critics make over and over again. If the critic you are reading pulls one of these blunders, he is most definitely a boob.

Mistake 6:
Making horrible puns.

I once read a review of a Weakerthans concert that was titled

"Weakerthans not so weak after all."

In that very same magazine there was a review of a video game called Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom in which the reviewer warned that

"Circle of Doom is a real circle of boredom."

What's a circle of boredom. I've never heard of the concept before.

Yes, movie critic Ben Lyons ACTUALLY SAID THAT.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE EMBARRASSING VIDEO PROOF!

After watching that video you might think to yourself

"Gee, Myself! Ben Lyons sure seems to be a huge douchebag, but I'm not entirely convinced yet."

Then you see the picture below and you become convinced:

Douchiest Grin Ever.

Critics aren't alone in making terrible puns, this kind of stuff happens all throughout journalism. When actor Wesley Snipes was sentenced to prison time for tax evasion, here's what one journalist wrote about it:

Snipes, a fourth-degree Black Belt in Karate, had trouble fighting the long arm of the law.

Before he became president Barack Obama revealed in his autobiography that he had sniffed cocaine. When he was running for president, one journalist speculated that

Obama's Cocaine Confessional Won't 'Blow' His Chances

Twilight actress Ashley Greene took nude photos of herself that later leaked all over the internet. One website wrote an article on how Ashley felt about the leak. The article featured this headline:

Hundreds of people review the same one product. There's a lot of competition for readers. Rather than making his writing stand out by improving the quality of his criticism, the critic feels he can get more people to read his shit by making cute comments in the title. What a hack.

Mistake 5:
Reviewing Concerts

Reviews exist to tell you whether or not something is worth your money. When a critic gives a movie a one star rating, no matter what words he uses in his review he's basically saying "don't watch this". Right? So when a reviewer gives a cd a very good rating he's telling you to go buy it. When a reviewer gives a concert a very good rating he's telling you to go watch it... except you can't. The concert has already happened. It is over, ancient history. If you read a positive concert review and you decide you want to see that concert you better get ready to jump into your time machine. What's that? You don't have one?

I guess you can read a positive concert review and then decide you'll see the band's next concert, except the band's next concert is taking place half the country away and plane tickets are 400$.

Mistake 4:
Reviewing television shows.

Some television shows start off well for the first few episodes but they quickly turn into complete dogshit when season two comes along (I'm talking about Lost of course). Other television shows (including Seinfeld and The Simpsons, two of the most popular shows of all time) start off with very weak early episodes and they only become good after two or three seasons have gone by.

So what's the problem? A critic is shown (at most) only the first two or three episodes of a show before he reviews it. Sometimes shows go on for literally hundreds of episodes!

Often, critics review only the first episode, slap a grade on it and then, voila, they act like that's what the whole series is worth and that's what the series will always be worth. They need to put disclaimers on their reviews saying things like, "this 6/10 score is for the 1st episode only!"

Mistake 3:
Saying something is too short and/or poor value for money.

So the average time it takes to beat a video game is about 12 hours. No matter how much fun it is to play, when a game that you can beat in less than 8 hours is released, all the video game reviewers go crazy warning you about how "this game is too short and it is poor value for money."

"Too short" is subjective. If you have no social life, you don't go to school, you don't work and all you have is spare time (or if you're a video game reviewer), then yeah, I can see how an 8-hour game could be too short. Most people however, have obligations and responsibilities and things to do. These people don't have unlimited time to spend on playing video games. For them, a video game that sucks up 8 hours of their life to beat would be preferable to a video game that sucks up 20 hours of their life to beat.

Saying that concert tickets to see the old, classic rock bands are too expensive and poor value for money when you can see a young, up and coming band for far cheaper, or saying that an 8 hour video game is poor value for money when you can buy a 40 hour video game for the same price IS IN BOTH CASES, STUPID. Why? Because not everyone makes the same money!!

If you're a stinking rich multimillionaire, paying someone a yearly six-figure income just to follow you around and roll your joints for you may seem like it makes perfect financial sense. Meanwhile, if you're on welfare, paying three bucks for a pack of chips is poor value for your money when you can buy a cheaper brand for a buck fifty. For one person a fifteen dollar dvd may be "good value for money" and for another person it may be "bad value for money" even if it is the same exact dvd.

Mistake 2:
THE FOLLOWING QUOTE:

"If you're already a fan of this sort of thing, go for it, if you're not this won't convince you otherwise."

This little phrase can be applied to anything, which is why reviewers abuse it constantly. It doesn't matter if they're reviewing an album by the Beach Boys or Cannibal Corpse, if they're writing about disco or death metal, if they're reviewing an action movie or a romantic comedy. If the product being reviewed is decent but not amazing reviewers always seem to write their reviews in the exact same way:

First they tell you what it is (a documentary, a crime drama, a musical, dirty south hip hop, hair metal, etc.).

Then they write something like the following sentence:

"Fans of this kind of stuff will find enough here to make it worth checking out but the unconverted should stay away."

I could start a music reviewing website and just make that sentence be literally half my reviews. Which is practically what real reviewers do these days. Lazy bastards.

Mistake number 1:
Attempting to describe the sound of music with words...

You can read Andrew Leahey's entire review here
(but why would you want to?)

I wrote more on the number one topic in an earlier article (located here).

Right, so now you have the tools to criticize the critics back. Exciting huh?