Published on January 2nd, 2010.
Text styles: [default] - [black text on white background]

The latest plague of the Internet is one word: opinion. No longer does someone have 'taste' or 'thoughts' - no, they have opinions. Go to your favorite forum, find any topic where any conflict could arise, and the longer the topic is, the more chance you will stumble across a phrase similar to "just my two cents" or the acronym "IMO". After calling out numerous people for it, I understand it's mostly become a habit to say for them because they don't want to come off as too harsh.

It is generally accepted that including the word opinion means you cannot be wrong, as if attaching the word to a phrase will make the phrase infallible. This notion is false. I repeat, opinions can be wrong. Perhaps it's because our culture readily accepts conceit and arrogance, or perhaps they just want to feel their center of the universe is more balanced, but I wholly blame people thinking that opinions cannot be wrong, on their ego.

It is, no doubt, very satisfying to say "this artist/medium sucks" and for them to actually believe that it is a bad band, and feel that as long as it's their opinion, they cannot be wrong. I think it's because I'm a creator - a game designer, and musician - that I am more sensitive to such ordeals. Imagine you spend 20 hours creating a song (common) and you give it to someone and - no! No, it's not that they don't like it, but it sucks. It's just bad. Okay, well then you ask them why. "Well I don't like it.", they might reply. So in short, they believe that because they don't like it, it is of poor quality.

The trick here is to learn the difference between objectivity and subjectivity. An example of an objective statement would be as above, "This band sucks." and a subjective (not to mention more polite) statement is, "I don't like this band." This is where most people's ego comes in. They feel that, as an opinion, you can state whatever you want and it doesn't have to be right or wrong because it is just that - an opinion; that they are "entitled" to being inherently infallible.

In response, I bring up the term "doctor's opinion". How can a doctor's opinion not be right or wrong? If he tells you you have a disease, his opinion is that you do have it. Well, turns out you just have gas. He was wrong. He cannot, in that case, even be subjective. He is dealing objectively: yes, you have the disease. "Yes, this band sucks." Your symptoms suggest you have this disease. The band's musicality is poor because: [reasons].

I'm all for objectivity. Not so much for music because it's an art form, but specifically in games I'll be able to tell you what the bad points are of it, what it literally does poorly, and what could be improved upon. There's been many times when people saw me in a game and messaged me to ask "is that game good?", it's a habit these days to ask the quality of something! Yet I tell them simply, "I don't know, but I enjoy it."

Now, dealing with subjective matters: though you cannot rely on the average common man's opinion for art forms, you can rely on credible source's opinions. A great example of this is the movie Transformers 2: people loved it. It grossed 400 million dollars off itself. I don't recall one person I talked to that said they didn't like it. The critics, on the other hand, hated it. 19% total on Rotten Tomatoes - the movie equivalent of Meta Critic. Their consensus: "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a noisy, underplotted, and overlong special effects extravaganza that lacks a human touch." - does that mean it's bad? Yes. Does that mean you're not going to like it? No. Being humble and polite, one should accept that sometimes they will like bad things. The average person does not accept such things. It is an insult to their taste, and thus to them, if something they like is not good.

An exception to this is music... being a musician myself, I find it hard to be able to prove much is bad. I can tell you that electronica/rap beats are simple to make, and they really are easy genres to become proficient at. It's hard to prove objectively that lyrics about shootin' niggaz and doin' drugz are bad beyond their absolutely abysmal grammar. Movies and games are more concrete than music. It appears, then, that the closer to an artform something becomes, the harder it is to give an absolute critique on it.

A final word on the subject before I bore you tears is the phrase "fact or opinion". If it's not abundantly clear to you the error with this phrase, you may as well close this window right now and go back to saying Twilight is gay, because there is little hope for you. "fact or opinion" implies that opinions cannot be based on fact. Like the doctor's opinion, we know that they obviously can be based on fact. The only time an objective opinion is ever worth anything is if you back it up via facts, just as the doctor did: "here are your symptoms; in my qualified opinion, this is what you have."

In conclusion, saying something is 'in your opinion' is irrelevant and sets the stage for a good cop-out. Speaking objectively should only be done if you have a detailed argument as to how you feel about the subject. Speaking subjectively at times may appear as a weaker argument, but ultimately the weakest argument will be one that is wrong. It is not a weasel tactic to generally stick to subjectivity in fear that you will be wrong; rather it is the tactic of tyrants to do otherwise. In our society, it may be difficult to stick to subjectivity when most people have a habit of saying a movie/band is of poor quality, but you will find that if you do make the switch, that you will be much more compatible, polite, and correct.

But that's just my opinion,
Vael Victus

BONUS ROUND - Don't Be A Penis

Someone asked me, "Well alright, I agree on that. But now what if you are eating dinner and you say 'this food is good'? It is obviously subjective, but at the same time it is objective. Do you need to prove that?"

Technically yes. Realistically no. Realistically, if you're eating someone else's prepared dinner and you like it, you say it's good. In some cases you might want to "switch" to subjectivity if it's going to be a negative comment, because who really gives a hoot about proving the pasta you're eating is any good? I'm incredibly anal about this stuff and I will still tell people their food is good, but to soften the insult if I genuinely did not like it, and they are asking me, I will say I didn't. Only if they are asking me, too, because unless I'm giving constructive crticism, I will not go out of my way to say I don't like something. As a general rule, for these matters, the burden of proof is on the one who criticizes, not praises.