*_* Sorry for not answering sooner. It takes crazy amount of time and dedication to try and find patterns in all the answers so that I stop answering to individual points but rather the general statements behind individual posts.
This is my attempt at Master Post combining all the separate argument threads into one.
You can just scroll through the I-VI chapters and see if any of the arguments answer your points previously made, but I tried to address the arguments of (in no specific order):
@Sakura.nobody (IV chapter in particular and V),
@yansusustories (Chapter III),
@Discount_Blade (I),
@Ace_Arriande (II and VI),
@thedude3445 (VII and III),
@AkalE (VI and II??),
@OvidLemma (VII and V), and
@XXII (IV). Aaand I'm probably forgetting someone... sorry.
Also, no Ad Hominems, please. I know some of you joined this thread late but I have this discussion because I am really interested in how meta-literary (and artistic) societies exist in general. No -- it wasn't because I have received a negative crit. It is because I myself and many others I have witnessed, used CC as a vehicle for putting people down (intentionally or unintentionally) by beating them with the Stick of Subjective Taste which is bizarre and I was sick of it.
Sigh. How many times do I have to repeat myself?
And yes,
@XXII -- it's because someone once gave Plato a wedgie that he went and became a philosopher who ponders "what is justice?". That wedgie... is the cause of all philosophy in the Western world, absolutely. There is no way Plato could have been interested in this question just because that's what he's naturally interested in. It was obviously that one very mean wedgie that did it.
And before anyone Ad Hominems me again... no, I don't compare myself to Plato because I am of such high opinion of myself. I can compare myself to a duck that suddenly swims left instead of right, it's all the same, but Plato is a more funny example. There needs to be no specific reason for a person deciding to pursue a goal (which, in this case, is this discussion). Okay? Let's all be in peace and not Ad Hominem each other again.
I. About the Nature of Theoretical Argument in General and its uselessness
(Response to all who asked "Why this thread tho?")
You are not wrong with comparing people in this thread to politicians. Philosophy as a branch commonly has three large subgroups:
1. "Philosophers" (as named by the ancients). People who argue to attempt to find Truth.
Nowadays most well-represented by theorists and analysts who gather and manipulate data to make assumptions and predictions, although depending on the area of study, they can skew more "useless-seeming" (humanities) and more "useful-seeming" (STEM) by the mainstream culture.
2. "Sophists". People who argue to win no matter what, usually by finding loopholes and manipulating prejudice and bias inherent to humans.
In the ancient times, sophists were ~ lawyers, so it's not uncommon to sometimes trace the origin of lawyers to them.
3. "Statesmen". People who use rhetoric to convince others to support/abandon a cause, usually ideological.
Obviously, politicians.
This thread can go all three ways, I suppose.
As a
philosophical one, it is solely interested in research and the preferences and views of the community on the topic to make predictions and define rules for the future. Whatever you say in it, goes into the data set.
As a
sophist one, it is in the logical/psychological game at the beginning. Essentially yes, I used a clause that's hard to refute in the OP because it takes all the interaction out of the Author's reception of CC. I made it based on the logic of solipsist thinking also kinda represented by Mary's Room that asks:
can the account from another (no matter how persuasive, scientific, and rational) compare to your own exposure and judgment of the thing?
I 100% agree with
this thread but across all writing rather than only the first novel it talks about.
Nobody can make your writing better but yourself. Compared to you in the future who have changed and are able to look back at your own writing from the past – there will be no Critiquer who will hold a candle. My argument is such that people grow and improve by themselves (in writing, by the nature of the passage of time and skill growing by exposure to other people's writing) – rather than by someone telling you where you need to improve or how. The most useful "Critiques" (or opinions) I have received in my life I could only see as such after
I changed. But by that point, they were no longer useful to me because
I have changed. (Usually through exposure, analysis, and general tutorials, NOT critiques). I could see the issues in my own past writing with or without these critiques ever being given to me.
Compare this argument to the teenager angst we all have to go through. No matter how prepared one can be to it, before you grow into it, you will not know what it feels like. Or, no matter how smart, convincing, true-to-life, wise, and helpful an adult is in describing to you how you will grow up one day and will not have teenage-specific angst anymore – you will NOT be able to receive this "CC" until you change by growing up. But by that point, any "CC" of that sort is no longer needed. You growing up (mentally or physically) did not necessarily have anything to do with the adults who gave you such a "CC" about teenage angst. Even without their "CC", you would have grown naturally anyway, regardless of how much time you need to achieve that.
At best, their "CC" while you are still deep in angst is annoying and irrelevant (and redundant after you exit this stage). At worst, you will feel isolated, unmotivated, talked down to, and will kill yourself because "nobody understands me and insist my feelings do not matter. Okay, bye, then".
[Above is only a model of how personal experience is represented in the period of growth – whether mental/physical or skill-related. In a nutshell – you can't judge your own era of growth until you change and can view it postfactum. Everyone else's judgment is largely irrelevant before (and even after) you grow].
What we all need is distance, not necessarily CCs. Which applies to all experiences you cannot have a critical eye on at a given moment and thus sometimes require another's point of view. But with all such things (that depend on growth of skill or exposure), this "another's point of view" is nothing compared to your own point of view from the future.
And as a "
political" argument, this thread is simply asking whether the institution of CC is necessary. In my mind, no -- because "any opinion that you find useful" would do exactly the same job as CC, only without the pretentious label that supposedly commands respect to the Giver of CC
based on no real proof of them being competent enough to give it.
Thus, "politically"-speaking, all I ask is why people get such a boner out of this label (CC) that they sometimes insist that a regular subjective opinion should be called that.
Mind you, I'm all for boners (I have one for philosophy) but just curious. ^^ Maybe any of you wll convert me into CC-fetish. I am very open-minded about this.
_____________________________
II. About the Nature of This Specific Argument
(Clear definition of what it tries to accomplish and what are the patterns of responses (distilled by me in Good Faith)).
BenJepheneT said:
Gordon Ramsay going sitting in McDonald's and calling everything in the menu "not burgers". Sure, they don't fit your holy palette, but that's what they are on the fundamental level.
Ace_Arriande said:
I believe that apples don't exist. What you and everybody else thinks is an apple is actually just a red orange. If you try to bring up the actual defintion of apples and oranges, you're relying on logical fallacies while hiding your ill intent behind the guise of constructive criticism. From now on, there are no apples. Only red oranges.
This is misrepresenting my argument because:
a) 9 times out of 10, a burger is a bun with stuffing inside,
(Culinary is an art medium so there may be some room for Reinvention of Burger and the Subversion of Burger, therefore 1 time out of 10 is reserved for such instances)
b) 10 times out of 10, an apple is a type of fruit that can be clearly distinguished from an orange by it not being a citrus;
c) and 10 (or even 9) times out of 10, the Constructive Criticism is...
...an opinion that may or may not have any of the following:
* intent of the Giver to help you improve;
* intent to be polite;
* attempt to guess what you were trying to achieve and judge your work based on the efficiency of your chosen methods for the guessed framework;
* an attempt to compare those methods to supposedly more efficient methods within the same guess;
* an attempt to make judgments based on conventional/nonconformist/niche/mainstream/subversive taste and how your work fits in with it regardless of whether it tried or not;
* to make an artistic judgment of whether the style, genre, goals of the work, and your structural and character skills align with the framework of the Giver's so that you two are roughly on the same page and are not just conversing in different dimensions entirely, etc.
Most of which are all either intentions that are impossible to surmise or attempts to guess and judge based on those guesses. They are not a fair comparison to what can be seen as burger or an apple.
More than that -- all of the qualities of an "Ideal CC in a vacuum" require high levels of competence.
Which takes me to another point –
most people who give out "CCs" do not have such levels of competence. (Not because they are stupid or whatever, but because subjective environments generally defy claims of competence).
_______________________________
III. CC and the Concept Creep
(For those who argue for the name as holding some importance).
As
@yansusustories and
@thedude3445 previously said, CC is a term that came from the academic world and was at first meant to be viewed as more objective, professional, specialist-focused type of reviewing by people who ARE COMPETENT in the fields that the writing/drawing/any art is offered for criticism.
Not among the hobbyists, not among the amateurs, not among the people who just want to share their art, or those who want to market something specific and niche that cannot possibly be judged by the mainstream, conventional rules of taste.
It's meant to be peer reviewed. Usually done by the people who:
a) do not need to guess your framework but already KNOW what it is;
b) do not need to assume good intentions in giving out the CC – these things are by nature accepted as Good Faith criticisms to a writing/art judged in Good Faith environment because it advances a common goal (science is such goal, for instance, and so is the artistry as grouped together by movements and ideas);
c) will be (somewhat) polite or objectively extremely influential where every word they speak is THE LAW (some teachers and academics are that and do not need to be polite, really) otherwise they will be penalized or removed from the judging process;
d) used in the ~examination process where there are clear goals to be reached. Yes, if you draw a stick figure and meant to draw a lifelike Adonis – the CC you will receive will reflect that. Likewise, if you were meant to draw a stick figure in abstract context and you drew a realistic Adonis, you will get your share of negative CC as well. Where there are clearly defined rules, there is not a lot of room for subjectivity in judging process;
e) there is a clear audience and rewards, like grants, prizes, scholarships, acceptance at a certain place – when you know your audience, you can review people based on the specific taste of that audience. Like, check out the youtube compilations of Calarts-accepted (and then non-accepted) sketchbooks. The successful ones will look somewhat homogenized, with very clear-cut requirements that further minimize the subjectivity and bias factor. Most importantly, everyone understands that he pursuit of the above-mentioned reward IS the goal – both for the Author and for their Critiquer.
So, the patterns of the ideal CC would look like these:
1. Same exact goal and framework.
2. Business-like context. No intention worth mentioning because you are supposed to be impartial and helpful to advance the common goal bu the nature of the context.
3. Clear rewards for success.
4. Clear penalty for failure of the end-product for both the Author AND the CC-Giver.
5. Clear penalty for the CC-Giver if he fails to follow the rules of Criticizing.
6. NO guessing involved. Judgment as defined by rules.
Now compare it to how we, people in the hobby writing and publishing communities give and receive Ccs. Who judges the rules (are there any?)? The rewards and whether or not the particular author is interested in those rewards? Who defines the intention and who polices the politeness or influentiality of a specific reviewer? Above all – who can vouch for the intentions and the ultimate goals and how it should be reached in the first place?
My argument is that the label Constructive in such an environment is a desire to emulate the serious, academic environment without meeting any of the requirements on both the author's and the reader' sides.
Not because "hur-dur, we are all so dumb and incompetent here, we are not academics!" but because where there are no clearly defined and agreed upon goals, there simply is no context in which even the semblance of objectivity can be applied.
That is why my personal lean in receiving "CC"s (although I don't call them as such but rather want readers' honest
opinions and gut-reactions. I will decide for myself what I can take from them or not) – is to ask for
specific points. Does my pacing in this chapter suck? Does this explanation sound too rambly or obscure? Does this character come across as unlikable or illogical? Is this a genuine plot hole or am I paranoid, etc...
At least then I control some level of goal/reward and put my potential critiquers in the same framework. It will still not be perfectly objective and therefore CC because our goals are not common (unlike in science, for instance), but it will help.
In short, the label CC has experienced the Concept Creep where its meaning has become so vague in the overuse by the masses of people who do not care what it was meant to do – that there is no real point (or benefit) in using it. Unless, of course, you like to play-pretend at academia... which I do, too, at times. Just not in this specific argument ^^.
Saying this is my "mumbo-jumbo" of your book or a "Deconstructivist Discourse on the Metafictional Reprieve of Fundamentalist Conceptualization of Pseudo-Phallic and Faux-Vaginale References" of your book delivers exactly the same level of impressiveness and surface-level clout as calling it a Constructive Criticism. The content =/= the name. It's just an arbitrary status that gives your subjective opinion a liiiitle bit more legitimacy by comparing it to academic writing, nothing else by this point.
But a regular opinion without that title WILL also fulfill the role of CC. Hence my confusion, especially coupled with the fact that people who insist on calling their opinions CC are likely to abuse it whereas those who do not call their opinions CC will be just as likely to match the "defined" content of a CC.
__________________________
IV. CC as Valid and Additive
(To those who made claims that CC depends on intentions of Adding Insight and Helping to Grow, whether on the Giver's side or the Receiver's side)
Interesting discussion ^^. Thank you for walking with me on this road. And thank you for referencing a Platonic ideal of writing and of a Writer who is aware of their faults. Both are very interesting ideas.
But also... here we go into the Causality issues from which no philosopher in existence has ever resurfaced sane ^^.
The majority of my original argument for this is in the I part of this Master Post. But I will quote the relevant bits here again:
"This argument is somewhat based on Mary's Room:
can the account from another (no matter how persuasive, scientific and rational) ever really compare to your own exposure and judgment of the thing?
Again, nobody can make your writing better but yourself. Literally. No one can force your hand or your mind to write differently, even in an academic environment (you will just face repercussions if you don't. But strictly speaking, nobody
forces you). The only thing that would is the
change you experience in perceiving your own writing.
A. But first, the change has to occur inside you. The easy way would be the objective-focus change (OC) that you would totally already apply to yourself but currently lack means to:
1) you would totally correct all your typos if you saw them;
2) you would totally write in a more grammatical way if you were given a sufficient education to employ this skill;
3) you would totally apply some obscure knowledge about a skillset you do not possess (writing about aircraft or pathologoanatomy) if you had exposure to them.
These are all objective elements that you would already apply if only you had them. While I agree that they are all very useful things, they are also indisputable, so, for me, not really a CC-material because they don't criticize your work but rather your lack of education in certain areas. Your creative writing will not necessarily improve from them. But the formatting and the looks will. It's a very surface-level thing to improve in one's writing, though I agree that it is paramount for respectability and ease of reading.
It's just not
creative writing. Like, compare it to F1 car and the F1 pilot. When I said that I'm not very interested in discussing these kinds of criticisms, that;s what I meant. There has to be some level of writing skill that does not correspond to a great F1 car bur rather to the talents of an individual pilot. If this metaphor makes sense to you...
B. Another type of change would be more subjective-objective (SOC) – something that is not a fundamental knowledge or law but rather one used in a specific context:
4) you would totally choose a writing style or genre to appeal to a target demographic if you a) cared about it, and b) knew what this demographic was and what its tastes were;
5) you would totally choose tropes and techniques and even structures/pacing/characters/themes that cater to a specific audience if you a) gave a shit about it, b) knew what this audience likes;
6) you would totally try to please a specific reader if a) you wanna, and b) if only they told you what they want from you so you can quit guessing and just do what they ask!
This type of criticism is the one I have only ever perceived as CC in my entire life as a writer. The issue here and a
HUGE ISSUE --
-- is that it's
not Writing advice. It is marketing research and consumer satisfaction. I was given such advice when I was trying to get into specific magazines or anthologies. They are objective in that sense – you either fulfill their quotas or you don't. But it has nothing to do with creativity of writing – but rather with fine-tuning your writing to a certain audience. I can take any of my stories and try make it less Hemingway or more Virginia Woolf if I need to for a specific reward. Does it teach me to write? No. It teaches me to analyse trends and to advertise. Usually, I can't exactly change the way I write – but I can mimic other writers' styles for a specific goal.
But do I want to? Not really. I come to writing because I want to write and find the audience for exactly what
I want to write -- and not because I want to emulate someone else or to please others (if you do, there's nothing wrong with that. And if you want to write exactly what other people want to read – that's crazy great and I envy you, but it still is irrelevant to my argument here because you are nonetheless writing for yourself first and foremost. You are a WRITER, not an advertiser even if what you write easily finds an audience. That it happens to satisfy others is a separate question).
So the only thing I can hope for is that my style of writing will find its audience, too. And I feel that most writers want to do exactly that – find a niche that inspires them and settle down in it. After all, "you can't please everyone", "if at least one person likes your writing, you've succeeded" etc, etc.
The problem I have with these SOC critiques is that outside of academic environment (where you have clear goals and rewards) and outside of getting into a specific anthology (where you also are given specific goals to fulfill!) -- most people who give this type of critique are, alas, incompetent.
Their incompetence lies in that they usually can't assess your desired audience, demographic, artistic movement (Idealist, Escapist, Realist, Socialist, Surrealist, etc), your movement's stage (Discovery, Classic, Subversive, Decadent, etc), your palette of tropes and cliches necessary to tell the story YOU want. They have to guess. And even when they don't, they simply might not have the skills to compare your writing to what you intended to achieve with it.
All they can give is their opinion. Their gut reactions. (Not that there's anything wrong with that – and I love people's opinions on my books. I'm just not going to ever call them CC! Why would I? My alcoholic neighbor also gives me opinion about my books, but trust me – his level of literary competence is nowhere near satisfactory!)
Or, in short – they tell you how they would personally write your story or what they thought your story was going to be. I'm not arguing that it can't be helpful. But it's still only an opinion and an opinion that, to be Constructive in the ideal sense, requires incredible competence most do not possess.
Lastly about this point: like I said previously in this thread. If you correctly assess all the intentions and goals of the author, usually you lose most of your critique in the process.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Take even the grammar and syntax critiques that seem to be much more objective than this SOC type. Tell it to Cormac McCarthy and to James Joyce and to Albert Camus and to Daisy Ashford. I wonder if your critique would even be considered Criticism (and not gibberish), let alone a Constructive one. Regarding CC about doing your research? How many authors of past and present are wrong about how the world works? Some literally do no research to write their books and so...? What if they
never intended to?
What if the lack of good pacing and no-plot-holes are not dealbreakers for some novels at all? Heck, in visual arts, you can tape a banana to the museum wall and it would be considered art with its own rules that our meager perceptions of "but the brushstrokes... but the cohesion... but the rules of the perspective!" do not apply.
Hence my argument about what constitutes a CC when we have
no objective standards to guide our criticisms within our environment of hobbyist and amateur enthusiast writing. We have to do these criticisms
blindly – and like some other people in this thread had said – I personally prefer not to.
Marketing and advertising criticisms are more objective, but again – what do they have to do with writing your stories vs pleasing people? These two concepts sometimes overlap, but not at the core of things. What if you like to write something that will NEVER please any people? What then? Not write?
It boils down to whether you see yourself as a writer first and businessman second, or the other way around. Every person answers this question individually ==> again, it becomes subjective and may even offend some people to be asked this.
C. The third way to change is the easiest and most obvious one.
You just grow up. You mature. You learn new things
with or without anyone's help. You get personal experience. You get exposure. You fail and you succeed and you learn from it. Trial and error. Empirical knowledge. The source of all improvement.
It applies both to general human growth (child --> teen --> adult) and to any skillset you can possibly have. If your skillset is active, you will grow NO MATTER what you do and no matter who happens to give you advice and why.
(By "your skillset is active" I mean that you cant expect a grow as a writer if you write/read once every year, duh. You have to maintain your skill the hard way by literally just "doing it!" and gathering your XP points in this skillset as the result. Only through experience will you be able to grow).
The most interesting thing about this is even if you are given the best possible critiques and Constructive Criticisms in your work, the likelihood of you improving IF YOU DON'T frigging write/read will be close to zero.
But – even without the targeted CC or advice -- the longer you write and read with the intent to learn, the better you will be.
There is this interesting pattern that almost everyone who tells me they learned from CC, also tend to say:
when you look back to your old writing, you see mistakes and fails. But the thing about this is that
even people who do not receive CC, once they look back at their old writing... notice the same thing.
So, should we assume that it was the presence of CC that caused improvement? Or maybe just the passage of time and growth unrelated to CC?
In this case , I want to stress that correlation =/= causation. Making claims that only CC help you with time might be kind of a placebo rather than the actual culprit. Which, in most cases of skill-growth are more connected with
time spent on the skill!
Most researches dedicated to learning do claim that it is exposure and experience that makes our minds and skills improve. NOT advice (unless it's objective in clearly-defined quotas. When your boss tells you "draw me a red banana!" you can be damn sure you will receive a Constructive Destructive Critique if you draw him a green banana. And he will be correct to do so because "Are you deaf??? Didn't I say "red banana"?". It becomes literally objective).
But no matter how good the "general" and subjective advice is and can be, unless you are ready to receive it (you have already grown and changed) – you will not learn anything new. But by this point, you have
changed already. At best, an advice you have already discovered and experienced by yourself, is conceptualization of things you already know. Most times, it's simply become irrelevant. At worst, it's annoying and condescending.
(Conceptualization of phenomena is an important thing, of course, but it's always a shortcut to the knowledge you already possess! You can't conceptualize and absorb something you don't understand or haven't experienced. This is where my "you agree with what you agree" comes in. You just need to put into words something you already know but don't exactly know the appropriate name/system for).
The best way to conceptualize all the above is this:
Mary's Room.
Mary lives in a black-and-white environment. She has never seen color Red. Question: can Mary, through research about color Red, personal anecdotes, literary allusions, essays, scientific papers made by others, etc – understand and simulate the experience what Red is without actually ever seeing it?
Simplified, this mind experiment was asking about "what part of ourselves" learns and perceives the world that is completely ours and cannot be given through secondary sources?
And the popular theory is that before you experience Red, you will not know what Red is. No matter how thorough, concrete, professional, smart, wise, and well-meaning the explanations might be – before you see Red, you will have no true understanding of what they are talking about.
Same with CC and my argument that it can "add" new knowledge. No, it can't. At best, it can conceptualize something you already know in which case it's not Constructive Criticism but rather a confirmation of your doubts and wants. What is it critiquing? Criticizing? What does it Construct? What are the rules of objective reality of writing that you are getting from it that you couldn't get anywhere else? And if you're not getting anything objectively Constructive and Improving from it but rather just confirm your own personal experience and exposure bias, then what is it other than "opinion that you happen to agree with" as I called it countless times?
Now regarding the Additive Nature of CC – the notion that you LEARN from CC.
Yes, but you can also learn from outside of it – from the general subjective opinions, too. So how does that separate "an opinion" from the CC? And if they're the same, then why are they called differently? The majority of people tend to learn outside of advice-giving environment unless it's your teacher and it's his job to give you advice (for this, consult the III chapter of this argument). So does that make CC a unique source to learn from? No. Far from it. Advice you tend to take is usually the one you agree with, so would likely just improve on it yourself anyway (again, confirmation bias for something you've learned elsewhere (usually experience) or straight out marketing advice, not the writing one). Advice you tend not to take has zero helping value, obviously.
So what about your follow-up argument that advice you don't take now but might take later when you've changed to accept it?
This is where causality issue comes in. You believe that a CC you will one day agree with stirs you and focuses you in a specific direction to learn and thus causes your improvement in the long run, even if it happens much, much later.
I disagree. My arguments will be these: most authors of books, movies, cartoons, games, and TV Shows – in the case that they cardinally disagree with some writing "CC" they are given will only back down harder on doing the opposite of it rather than be directed to learn and improve the criticized element. If anything, CC you disagree with will postpone your improvement. There are many recent examples, partly because the Critocracy of Youtube and other venues is so rampant these days. But creators actually do feel very resentful of people demanding they change something under the guise "but muh CoNstRuCtIve cRitICisM!". Off the top of my head, Steven Universe, Voltron, GoT, SWSequels, Miraculous Ladybug, RWBY, STD, Doctor Who etc. Most of them are also marketing disasters but the gist is such that when their writing choices (not political ones but actual writing) gets a so-called CC, the creators tend to do the exact Opposite of what is being suggested. Simply because if they don't agree, they are now actively prohibited from agreeing for a much longer time due to the fact that they are not given an opportunity to learn on their own but are "forced" to it.
(Yes, if you say "but nobody is forcing them!", their behavior is certainly immature. But so is the behavior of most people who give out CC. The "I am right, you are wrong, let me show you" mentality is incredibly rampant for the field where there are
no objective rules of taste! But I will go more in-depth into this separate issue in chapter V of this argument).
Only when you are ready – usually separately and without the CC pushing on you – can you learn from your past mistakes and grow. But to claim that it happened because of that "CC" is to ignore the majority of sources people learn form in their daily life and application of skills. No real researcher can do that. We have to take all the experience that contributes to learning into account, so again, correlating later success with an early CC is... weird. We can't do that. There are too many variables at play. But my personal bet is on everything else because of how huge that other section is compared to the instance of one or two meager Ccs you might have gotten that got under your skin.
Because if so, then your mom telling you you write crap counts as a CC that improved your writing because you felt so resentful about it you decided to write day and night to "show her". Many things can do that. To claim success rate on it is a typical example of survivor's bias. In the 99% of all CC that are given that end up failing simply because... like, almost anything can count as CC as long as it has the "intent to help" and is given in a "critiquing context" – and thus the rate of failure would be extremely high – to claim that Shakespeare improved his writing later on BECAUSE his first plays received shit from some critics is... weird, I guess? His Middle plays improved, that is. Because his Later plays also tend to be obscure and not examples of what "good Shakespeare" is. Does it mean that Ccs also ruined Shakespeare???
Maybe. Maybe not. Correlation =/= causation. "What ifs" do not matter but science does. Studies of how learning works put advice that's given outside of clear goal/reward systems – MUCH lower than personal experience learning. And for most writers, the bulk of their learning does NOT come from CC (literally, absorbing any type of art, even on the background, works much better than CC unless it's not a CC of writing but general marketing research).
If anything, in the field of amateur writing, CC makes personal something that has no right of being personal. And once you introduce personal (
my taste,
my opinion,
my desire to prove you what you are doing wrong and why
I think so), you also introduce the clear indication of bias and human error. And automatically make all of your CC – a mere opinion that the author might or might not agree with.
_______________________________
V. CC and Intent Defense
(For anyone who claims that CC is defined by intent of the giver to help and the intent of the receiver to learn).
Another big deal in regards to CC is that it can be defined based on the Intent. We've already talked about Intent-to-Help and how it's impossible to prove. For starters, no one can prove their intent is positive even to themselves, unless people want to analyze themselves to death. In which case – there is no such thing as positive intent toward another that is not also self-serving. Alas. Just how humans are. You may wrap your Intent to Help into as many layers of altruism as you want, but the core will still be somewhat egotistical. If only to impress the person you are CC-ing, or if only to feel good about yourself for a few minutes. Your "Intent to help", the deeper we go into what causes it, will imminently crash into your ego.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯).
I don't want to try and untangle that, so what I want to focus is on the "optimism about intent" instead.
Or in other words – "
let's assume all CC have the Intent to Help that is not self-serving in some way".
Personally, this is what I go with when I interact with all opinions. Including those popularly labeled as CC. The difference is that opinions have no pretensions to objectivity while CC sometimes do when they have no right to, but let's not go down this rabbit hole again ^^.
For me, this Good Faith defense does not work because of a very simple idea:
Why should I give a CC Good Faith in perceiving it if the CC itself and the person who wrote it does not give the Good Faith to the thing he is criticizing?
Which puts me back to my argument of objectivity in art. If there are no objective rules in art, ANY criticism (definition of criticism – is judgment of success and pointing out of flaws) by its very nature is
not done in Good Faith.
Thus, I do see this as a somewhat hypocritical defense.
If you apply Good Faith to a piece of art ==> you have no criticism because there are no objective rules on which you can base your judgment of success/failure in art but should rather view ANY piece of art as working "as intended and meant to be". Thus, impossible to criticize unless you really just wanna.
If you dont apply Good Faith to a piece of art, you do not really deserve to be given Good Faith applied to your "CC" either. Because its intent is clearly NOT "to help".
Its intent becomes "to make X piece of art
different" by proving how "my
different is better than your
different" – which circles us back to my original argument: the so-called CC outside of clear goal/reward system is non-distinguishable from an Opinion you agree/disagree with.
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VI. CC as Opinion
(To those who made claims that there is and cannot be an Objective Definition of CC and that trying to make one is a futile attempt due to semantics clause (It's all relative anyway, like).
Duh. I have nothing to say about the first half of that statement. That is my exact argument from the start, lol.
5-star review to this argument ^^.
The second half of this statement is annoying to me, though, because it ignores the fact that this thread IS a typical example of a qualitative research and an attempt to make categories for better thinking and analysis. You might personally only want the practical result of this thread, done in a "YES, CC does not exist!" or a "NO, CC definitely exists! There it is – look, look, it's crawling right there!". But the thread itself gives me opportunity to refine my arguments and expand my thinking. Hopefully, it does that to some other people as well. All forward movements in history were made because somebody decided to study some shit everybody else didn't find interesting. Yes, even in humanities.
For starters, I went deep into defining the concept of Writing vs Advertising. It is an interesting idea to me because most of what we do (as humans) is based on Advertising and trying to please and appease others for survival. Just how we are. I even once wrote a story about how most relationships between people are just clickbait advertising. ^^ Fun times. So where do we draw a line of what constitutes "Writing for the sake of Writing" from 'Writing to Succeed by Readership's standards"?
In this thread, for instance, the metric I used for this difference is this: you write something, THEN you look for the audience that might like it. It feels like a Writing-first approach. If you first look for an audience and try to gauge their interest rates and their preferences, and only THEN write – it becomes Advertising-first approach. Deep inside, I believe that all writing is the second approach, only on a subconscious level. But for me, this difference in clear awareness is the defining characteristic, not so sure about others.
Likewise, the Competence of the field and what constitutes an amateur or a hobbyist as compared to the Conventional standard of "science" or "occupation", especially in such a field as Art. Also topic I am very interested in studying further one day.
And lastly, tied to that concept of Competence and how we build hierarchies of superiority based on what we perceive as outward characteristics of competence, yes – I do feel that mimicking the academic environment just for the sake of it is big part of why CC as a concept proliferates in amateur and hobby environments. People have opinions, always do. In the sea of opinions, anything that can give it just a tiny bit more attention than it deserves compared to other equally-valid opinions, is something that helps spread it and elevate it. Whether or not calling someone's opinion a CC is a misinformation or a troll attempt to bully or a mistaken pretentiousness of a person who doesn't have the competence levels but claims he does – is not important. I see all of you and accept all of you, even if you bully someone under the guise of CC simply for lulz. People have different tastes, after all.
Still doesn't stop me from wanting to separate this fuzz of "I want to somehow elevate my opinion in a ridiculously subjective field with no clear rules for success. I'll give it a fancy label, then" from what most people actually see as helpful or unhelpful criticism.
Which brings me to the last point of my argument...
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VII. CC as Practice vs Theory
Most arguments in this thread about CC claim anecdotal evidence for its existence. I know! Because I claim the exact opposite. (both are anecdotal). But the point is that you can't convince someone the CC they perceive as CC is not, and vice versa. Nobody is even trying.
However, it does become the "eye of the beholder" thing whether we like it or not. Saying that some opinion "given in a specific context, under the specific alignment of planets and on the third Friday of each month" is a CC -- is not an objectifying defense. Because now you have to specify what do you mean by "critiquing context". Is your mom judging your writing in a critiquing context when you're not even sure if she read any of it but speaks like she did?
Is a toddler you babysit who saw a couple of lines from your book now competent enough to give you a CC in a "critiquing context" and even with the "intent to help you improve"?
I have already given examples of opinions that intentionally/accidentally misunderstand your writing and claim to see depths and advantages in it that aren't there. Can you disprove that those are also CC? Because if you can only give me the "no... this one doesn't feel like a CC" (even when all the other requirements of a CC – 1) context of critiquing, 2) judgement of flaws, 3) intent to improve – are there!) -- then sorry. But you are not defining anything about the concept of CC other than...
"...it's a kind of an amateur opinion about an amateur art piece... that at certain point in time, and differently to different people, might or might not look or feel like it can be called a "CC" whatever is implied by that term. Probably.
Maybe.
I suppose...
But! (puts on the tinfoil hat along with people who have seen Bigfoot and Nessie) – I swear I saw one in the wilds once!"
Because – hey. I'm not denying that you did see it once. I also saw some once. My friend once told me that my main character was a little bitch even before reading my book and I had an epiphany. My character WAS a little bitch! OMG, so helpful. And no – this is not sarcasm. I actually went to the book and toned down the instances of where her behaviors were harsher than necessary. It was... actually very helpful.
My dad's opinion that I shouldn't write myths without reading actual mythology books first even though he hadn't read the book I wrote at 8-years old also helped me improve. My friend's question "does your book pass the Bechdel test?" also caused my book to improve by my standards because I wanted to do it anyway, and her suggestion worked for me. My writer buddy telling me to read Brandon Sanderson's rules of writing helped, too. Not in the way she intended, but helped nonetheless (because, like I said above with targeted CC you disagree with – I only backed down on the actual stuff she criticized because she wasn't making any sense to me there and still doesn't!).
In my anecdotal evidence, the differences between the CC and any general opinion are indistinguishable. From your anecdotal evidence, you are not really providing the concrete definitions of CC that automatically and objectively disqualify "subjective opinions". I can tell that your arguments are, though valid, mostly concerned with upholding a standard that doesn't necessarily exist.
I.e. an Emperor's New Dress. A concept I don't mind because EmperorNewDress is helpful by placebo effect. I satisfies our general perceptions of order and sociable customs and behaviors. And in the end, this placebo effect is what makes the general THEORETICAL existence of CC useful. People need to think that there is or should be an ideal CC because that's the order of things.
But in practice... I feel it's more condescending and harmful than useful. Nobody benefits from this label, really, aside from the attackers who are given a free ticket to bully others. Again, look at the entertainment industry and the place of Cultural and Art Criticism that proliferates right now. Most of it ends up being nothing but vomit of subjectivity in a fun, and also extremely antagonizing manner that's made for the spectators on the side rather than the author being criticized. And yes. They also call it CC. It's like a whole genre of gaslighting (when a person is being insulted based on someone's subjective standards, and then told "but it's for your own good!" repeatedly) which is the main reason why I made this thread to begin with.
The bad, in my view, far outweighs the good because the good would not benefit from the label whatsoever. If it's good, then get rid of the label – it's doing nothing anyway since it's the CONTENT of your opinion that may help someone. Not what you call it! Only the negative aspects of criticism in amateur settings benefit from the label.
So... why uphold the label at all?
So, I agree with lots of the stuff you wrote and I'm just going to cherry-pick a few things I want to give a few thoughts on. Starting with this:
