SupremeAC said:

Ack.  the internet ate my reply.  

In short, I listened to Ep76.  You go on about how the internet is heavily curated, but how is this relevant?  Is it to disprove the statement that 'more words are spoken, but less words are heard'?  Because you seem to prove that with your arguments.  Is it because you disagree that the internet is democratic?  Because if so I disagree.  Democracy isn't about everyone being equal/everything being easily accessible, it's about everyone having the right to be heard.  If you want equal, you should go with communism, at least theoretically.

furthermore you make 2 points: a) reviews are neither well written, nor sufficiently long b) reviews contain little, if any, factual information.  The first is true, but holds true for everything these days.  Contemporary society has the attention span of an easily distracted goldfish.  The latter is true, but also a symptom of modern day society.  Why invest time in forming an opinion when you could just find a source of news aligned to your preferences and place trust in their opinion?  Which in turn doesn't encourage the gaming press to give factual information, but rather to resort even more to being subjective in order to form a relatable 'identity' to attract readers.

Sorry for being so brief, but I didn't have time to type it out all over again.

The internet ate your reply, and yet you call it democratic?

Irrelevant asides are a trademark [banter] of the GameUnder podcast.

A democracy is a state of governance in which all people under the rule of a governing body are supposed to be involved directly or indirectly in the decisions made by the governing body. I don't think the internet has ever fit that descriptor (and, of course, most democracies don't in reality). My experience of the internet started out as reasonably anarchic; now it is, to a greater degree, controlled by corporations. In turn these corporations face pressure from governments...or are owned by government organisations. If those government organisations are from democratic governments, then does that make their influence democratic? I suppose so, but it’s only an influence: ultimately their will is still at the mercy of certain corporations (unless it’s one of the corporations they own). But if that's the argument then, to a degree, the internet is indeed democratic. However, I think calling the internet democratic because the barrier to self-publication is so low, is a bad metaphor.

Indeed, but I would go so far as to say that in their attempt to become relatable they go one step further and try to anticipate what their readership will think of the content they're reviewing, making themselves even more redundant in the process.

Sorry for the delay. Wrote a reply yesterday, but didn't like it.

EDIT: I don't like this one either, but it'll have to do. The trouble is, no one governs the internet as a whole so to think about it in terms of governance is folly, and to apply a metaphor based on governance to one aspect of the internet makes for a bad metaphor if that metaphor does not in some way enrich what is being described. Here, calling a low barrier to self-publication democratic, is simply stating that: in a democracy everyone gets to vote, on the internet everyone gets to post. Neither enlightening, nor interesting, and not particularly accurate given the vastly different contexts of the two endeavours. Not that my library comparison to Google is any better...

So far as I can tell all three of us agree except for on the semantics of vocabulary.

SupremeAC said:

I concur.  But where's the fun in agreeing?  

Also, I still feel that it's the (lets try this again) heigthened sense of self-importance, which was enabled to become commonplace through the rise of the internet, is the main reason for the downfall of long term writing and the erosion of true expertise and the general respect therefor.  So yeah, I blame the internet for crappy reviews.

If it makes you feel any better, I certainly disagree with your diagnosis of the symptoms.

In any case, my brain is now retired from text on the internet; if it's ever seemed like I've been eager to end a discussion with you early lately, it's simply that my mental energy is extremely finite, and the well has recently run dry. I've really, really enjoyed all the discussions we've had. One day my brain shall hopefully come out of retirement. When that day comes, prepare yourself for more walls of superfluous text!

In the meantime, please to enjoy a barrage of random, miniaturised crap-spouting, or lurking!

'Gamer' isn't a single identity; we need diverse critics too

Opinion 3 days ago Backlash to Fallout 4 is founded on a daft premise - that all gamers prefer the same things - but critics need to stop echoing one another too

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