Criticism as a defense against Criticism

[wulf3n]

I'm seeing a disturbing trend lately.

Person X criticises a piece of media. Person Y criticises the criticism. Person X treats the criticism of their criticism as an attempt to stop them from criticising, in much the same way that person Y sees the original criticism as an attempt to hinder game developers.

Do you see it too, or am I just going crazy?
Do you believe criticism should be free from criticism?
Do you agree whole heartedly?
etc.

 

[Risingblade]

I'm pretty sure that's a fallacy...I can't remember which one though.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well first and foremost nothing is beyond criticism, ever. Only question is how dirty you want to play.
Anyone who has been in debate clubs for long enough knows nothing is off limits when you want to win, attacking the person, attacking their circles, friends, religion, political stance, education, even the wording of their sentences alone, reinterpreting what they said to suit your needs, or plain inventing shit,... the list of options is endless before you ever need to even go close to what the topic was in the first place.

The choice on your end is do you go along with dirty play or not.

 

[sanquin]

Well first and foremost nothing is beyond criticism, ever. Only question is how dirty you want to play.
Anyone who has been in debate clubs for long enough knows nothing is off limits when you want to win, attacking the person, attacking their circles, friends, religion, political stance, education, even the wording of their sentences alone, reinterpreting what they said to suit your needs, or plain inventing shit,... the list of options is endless before you ever need to even go close to what the topic was in the first place.

The choice on your end is do you go along with dirty play or not.

My god the fallacies... Any proper debate club would want to try to stay clear of those. >.>

 

[Eddie the head]

I'm pretty sure that's a fallacy...I can't remember which one though.

The closest thing I can think of is an appeal to fallacy. When you state the opposite of something is true based on the fact someone used a fallacy to justify it. That's not exactly what the OP means I don't think. It's not fallacious to criticize a criticism. Hell and appeal to fallacy is a criticism of a criticism.

Anyway yeah it's perfectly fine. We need people to point out Creationists, climate change deniers, and anti-vaxxers are full of shit. The fact that they're criticizing such things doesn't make there criticisms valid. This apply's to media as much as it dose to objective facts.

 

[Strazdas]

Everyone is free to criticize media and everyone is free to criticize that criticism. The problems arise when people conflate criticism to harassment and think they can never be wrong.

 

[Erttheking]

I've said it a couple of times, but frankly I try to only say it when the person I'm talking to tries to dismiss my argument entirely instead of actually addressing it.

 

[Atmos Duality]

My god the fallacies... Any proper debate club would want to try to stay clear of those. >.>

Fallacies don't carry any real weight outside of debate clubs...and internet forums to a lesser degree.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

The problems arise when people conflate criticism to harassment and think they can never be wrong.

Conflate criticism to harassment, or conflate criticism to "censorship" .

Honestly, a lot of people just have extreme difficulty whenever they encounter an opinion that does not align with theirs. I'd offer some recent or timely incident as demonstration but my word, take your pick.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

You see it most when people's belief systems include a need to feel persecuted to feel worthy, or when their opinions are unsure and unsound. People respond badly to threats to what they believe after all.

Eh. I occasionally see what looks like evidence of persecution complexes, but I'm hesitant to state they are the cause with any authority, as that requires a lot of projection. I'm also occasionally tempted to attribute it to simple bone deep stupidity, but that is also projection, and not a very commendable position for me to take.

People have an innate need to believe that they are in the right, I'm not even sure they can function without believing that (outside of sociopaths). They arrived at their perspective through a series of mental decisions and checkpoints, and it takes an atypically flexible mind to abandon that calcified system of belief because someone made a clever riposte on an internet forum. I do wish that people were more comfortable letting opinions they find antagonistic alone...particularly when those opinions amount to little more than media criticism, and aren't matters of civil liberty or life and death...but hey, if wishes were horses.

 

[C14N]

I do see this a lot alright, often mixed up with total misunderstanding of "freedom of speech" and whatever as well. I vaguely remember it happening a lot when that PC RPG game came out where one of the female characters had ridiculously huge boobs and some games sites criticised it for objectifying women, being juvenile, blah blah, and then a load of people who I guess really like massive tits in their games started complaining about how this was censoring artists or creators or whatever as though free speech only worked one way.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I vaguely remember it happening a lot when that PC RPG game came out where one of the female characters had ridiculously huge boobs and some games sites criticised it for objectifying women, being juvenile, blah blah, and then a load of people who I guess really like massive tits in their games started complaining about how this was censoring artists or creators or whatever as though free speech only worked one way.

Wasn't that the "Dragon's Crown" game or whatever it was called? I thought it was like, a brawler or something?

 

[C14N]

I vaguely remember it happening a lot when that PC RPG game came out where one of the female characters had ridiculously huge boobs and some games sites criticised it for objectifying women, being juvenile, blah blah, and then a load of people who I guess really like massive tits in their games started complaining about how this was censoring artists or creators or whatever as though free speech only worked one way.

Wasn't that the "Dragon's Crown" game or whatever it was called? I thought it was like, a brawler or something?

Yeah I think that's it. I didn't really follow it very closely, I just remember it being brought up once or twice in Jimquisition. I guess it might have been a brawler, I just saw a small bit of footage and I guess I thought it was an RPG based on that and the aesthetic.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

I do see this a lot alright, often mixed up with total misunderstanding of "freedom of speech" and whatever as well. I vaguely remember it happening a lot when that PC RPG game came out where one of the female characters had ridiculously huge boobs and some games sites criticised it for objectifying women, being juvenile, blah blah, and then a load of people who I guess really like massive tits in their games started complaining about how this was censoring artists or creators or whatever as though free speech only worked one way.

It does seem to be more often a two step process as opposed to the 3 step one the OP seems to believe exists.

 

[happyninja42]

The problems arise when people conflate criticism to harassment and think they can never be wrong.

Conflate criticism to harassment, or conflate criticism to "censorship" .

Honestly, a lot of people just have extreme difficulty whenever they encounter an opinion that does not align with theirs. I'd offer some recent or timely incident as demonstration but my word, take your pick.

You see it most when people's belief systems include a need to feel persecuted to feel worthy, or when their opinions are unsure and unsound. People respond badly to threats to what they believe after all.

Yeah, you see this a lot online with the nerd community, because so many seem to attach their personal identity to their fandom for some thing, Doctor Who, Star Trek, etc. They have internalized the thing they love so much that criticizing it is criticizing them. Though to be honest, I can't say this is a gamer/nerd specific thing, as I see this with political/religious views all the time as well, but on this site, it's usually focused on gamer stuff. The trick is to just divorce yourself from the thing in question, and try to look at it rationally, and then ask the other person what point they are trying to get across. If they reply with more bile and spittle, then just write the discussion off as a wash, and do something else. It's not easy to do, since we're humans, but being able to do so can help communication.

Also, avoiding using the word "you" helps a lot. I have a tendency to use you in the plural sense, but frequently people assume I'm directly talking about them, and the conversation will devolve into something ugly. Also, proofreading what you said out loud helps too. Seriously, read over what you typed before you hit post. Not just for grammar/syntax issues, but to see what the feel of your post is. Reading it again, when you're not focusing on actually getting the thoughts out, can help you see that "whoa, I got a little more toxic there than I really meant to, let me reword this bit here, and here, and tone it down a bit".

 

[C14N]

I do see this a lot alright, often mixed up with total misunderstanding of "freedom of speech" and whatever as well. I vaguely remember it happening a lot when that PC RPG game came out where one of the female characters had ridiculously huge boobs and some games sites criticised it for objectifying women, being juvenile, blah blah, and then a load of people who I guess really like massive tits in their games started complaining about how this was censoring artists or creators or whatever as though free speech only worked one way.

It does seem to be more often a two step process as opposed to the 3 step one the OP seems to believe exists.

I guess it's more something I see on internet discussions, but I do kind of get what the OP means too. You especially see it on sites like Reddit where your comments get downvoted, which many people basically treat as a form of censorship. I couldn't count on two hands the number of times I've seen a comment where someone is complaining that a community is censoring their opinions on X or Y topic because their comment got downvoted for it. Ironically, a huge number of these complaints get heavily upvoted.

 

[Strazdas]

The problems arise when people conflate criticism to harassment and think they can never be wrong.

Conflate criticism to harassment, or conflate criticism to "censorship" .

Honestly, a lot of people just have extreme difficulty whenever they encounter an opinion that does not align with theirs. I'd offer some recent or timely incident as demonstration but my word, take your pick.

COnsidering that i wrote harassment im fairly sure i meant harassment. Yes, quite a few people cry harassment when they encounter an opinion that does not align with theirs. they then proceed to dox people to try and shut them up.

 

[Abomination]

What the OP has described is essentially an organic debate between two people but stretching the definition of "criticism" to also include "rebuttal".

Disagreeing or attempting to undermine someone's stance on something isn't aggressive, evil or censorship - it's simply debate.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

COnsidering that i wrote harassment im fairly sure i meant harassment. Yes, quite a few people cry harassment when they encounter an opinion that does not align with theirs. they then proceed to dox people to try and shut them up.

Yes I'm aware you wrote harassment. I agreed with you. I then made an addition of my own, which is to point out all the people who cry and moan "censorship" when they encounter opinions that differ from theirs, usually in the form of disapproval of their own opinions.