What is the point of a review? Some view it as an art, others a qualitative scientific analysis, and others still view it as a way of peering into one's philosophy. Can one criticize such a broad topic as "review" and furthermore do we refer to the item or the action of creating the item?
For our review of review we will focus on the action of reviewing, as that is the most suitable to this review. The act of reviewing, I am able to clearly review at this present moment by typing this review, and while typing this line I feel this review is merely, words on a screen at face value. Of course, upon further introspection I see more to the meaning of this review, as most people do when engaging in introspection. I see a possibility, a meta form of review making possible an inspection of the various facets one might analyze whilst reviewing. Is this review going to work merely because I am gifted in the art of impromptu bullshitting, will it work because of an inner enthusiasm I genuinely wield as I type yet another review in a long line of reviews, or will it flop on its face for the somewhat overdone novelty of being 'meta' which is in itself one of the most self-absorbed snobbish things in existence, this meta.
The 'meta' of reviewing so-to-speak would be what I call a guideline that can be mostly ignored. You know a general feel for it and you can easily google any few formats on what the best ways of reviewing are and keep them in mind. It is when we let those formats define us, that the act of reviewing can become stale, and feel as if it was a formulaic ball of cat shit shat out for the sake of reviewing and not for the sake of enlightening the reader. For instance, if I were doing this meta review by following a specific format I knew, it would taste like stale crackers and shit wine as that would be very dull and would cage the energy this review exhibits. It is almost metaphysical this energy, some even calling it spiritual, though for the sake of our existence within a realm of reality defines by realistic qualities, not spiritual ones, we will assume that this energy is the product of a positive chemical bursts of excitement and pleasure inside of our minds.
It is so easy, to pump out these paragraphs of words. I am at no time during this review so much as pausing more than 5 seconds every 7 or so lines, and even then I may be over-stating that pause. No, the act of reviewing appears to be somewhat of a natural flow rather than a bureaucratic formula or a scholarly art meant to be meticulously mastered as some may mistakenly believe.
So the act of reviewing, does it serve a purpose that is worthwhile? For me this purpose is 70% entertainment and 30% knowing where to spend your money. Many people use reviews for knowing if they are going to get their fortune's worth and in general you are not going to see a movie that got below a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. However, more than that, I believe most people utilize reviews not for their own financial interests (though that is a key factor) but instead for the sheer entertainment. Some reviews are cheesecakes you love for a few moments and remember as the wonderful flavors of thought they were. Others are the potato chips (as Egoraptor once called the difference between Castlevania 1 and 2) wherein they are merely, something to use for passing the time. You could spend an eternity trying to sift through and read all of the reviews which exist in our world. Imagine the many more reviews you would have to deal with if there were more worlds - no living being could keep up and even a quantum computer may take a solid few hours to keep up.
Entertainment first, focus on helping the consumer spend money second, is what I believe reviews are truly intended to be and truly used for. It is a mistake in my eyes for a reviewer to view their self as an almighty almanac of quality that must be relied on in order to not waste one's fortune. On a general level that may be the case looking at the collective whole of reviewers; but on an individual level, when someone takes the time to read a WHOLE review and not just the 25 words or less version, that person is not reading for the monetary value anymore but instead reading for the entertainment value.
To this end I believe is is abundantly clear that reviewers are a quasi-entertainer of sorts. I say quasi, because it is quite ironic to view the critics of an entertainer's entertainment as themselves entertainers and many would view them as the exact opposite of an entertainer. I would not want to outright cast reviews as definitive entertainers in some sort of weird entertainment-critic paradox, but instead would say they are half-way entertainers but not quite. See, a critic is held back by the fact they HAVE to be witty and cannot merely go for some abstract ridiculousness, while an entertainer can do whatever the hell they want to.
Overall, reviewing as an act has to me felt overly self-absorbed because critics convince themselves they MUST truly be the authorities on quality just because they have experience and scholarly training. Experience and scholarly training might make you a definitive expert if you were say, an engineer for a bomber on an air force base; but that is not nearly as true for something so absolutely qualitative in nature as a review. Unless you are some weird other field of reviewer for the quality of manuals on building architecture or how to do taxes, you are most likely reviewing a piece of entertainment or something abstract or even philosophical in nature and to this end, your review is not going to be concrete. How can you claim to have a concrete review of something which is by its very nature, not concrete. Reviewing is not particularly scientific beyond its qualitative research and overall relies on the opinions of the reviewer. The years of experience and scholarly training the reviewer has gone through hones the reviewer in their eloquence and their ability to express themselves wisely.
But just because someone is wise and eloquent does not mean their rhetorical abilities are in themselves suddenly a valuable philosopher's stone of scientific cohesive concrete analysis. Far from it, I would argue because a reviewer can, and only can, express their feelings. You are shaped by your environment and your viewpoints you are brought up under whether they are philosophical or political in nature in addition to your socio-economic experiences. But the person is the person. You trust a person, not the arbiter of true quality, when it comes to reviews. When you trust a person, you are not really trusting them because of their scholarly ability or grand experiences in life. You trust them because you feel like they should be trusted and those feelings, whether they are a result of noticed credibility, relatability, or a common logical consensus, they are always going to be feelings. To this end, reviewing is simply the exploiting of one's own feelings in an eloquent and wise manner, as is in line with the historical tradition of rhetors balancing eloquence with wisdom.
This further could be utilized on politics to an extend seeing as it to is but a grand display of the feelings of people well-refined by experience and scholarly education and made clear through a balance of wisdom and eloquence. But that is but a side comment and merely reflects how politics to an extent connects with the field of reviewing only instead of reviewing entertainment it deals in reviewing the functions of government and its people.
Did this whole review, this nonstop spasm of typing which has gone on for roughly half an hour nearly non-stop, important? It is as important as you want it to be and as much as I want it to be. I could just say I conclude it is pointless and not important and I could do the exact reverse and justify either side of said point just as you could. But that is the thing - the importance of any review is entirely up to people. Reviews are but eloquently explained feelings on a topic combined with a tempered wisdom from experience and scholarly knowledge. How can you say feelings are or are not important? Is importance important? It is a philosophical question people cannot give an absolute answer on; merely people feel an absolute feeling which creates an answer inside themselves. Ultimately, all reviews are as important as the review and its readers deem it to be. And ultimately, while my feelings indicate this review is important, regardless of its cartoonish length, you may absolutely come to the reverse conclusion, and in truth, neither of us really know why; we merely feel why.
And as a final note, point ratings out of 10 or 100 are incredibly arbitrary especially on a topic like this.
I review the act of reviewing as a happy mushroom out of 6.
For our review of review we will focus on the action of reviewing, as that is the most suitable to this review. The act of reviewing, I am able to clearly review at this present moment by typing this review, and while typing this line I feel this review is merely, words on a screen at face value. Of course, upon further introspection I see more to the meaning of this review, as most people do when engaging in introspection. I see a possibility, a meta form of review making possible an inspection of the various facets one might analyze whilst reviewing. Is this review going to work merely because I am gifted in the art of impromptu bullshitting, will it work because of an inner enthusiasm I genuinely wield as I type yet another review in a long line of reviews, or will it flop on its face for the somewhat overdone novelty of being 'meta' which is in itself one of the most self-absorbed snobbish things in existence, this meta.
The 'meta' of reviewing so-to-speak would be what I call a guideline that can be mostly ignored. You know a general feel for it and you can easily google any few formats on what the best ways of reviewing are and keep them in mind. It is when we let those formats define us, that the act of reviewing can become stale, and feel as if it was a formulaic ball of cat shit shat out for the sake of reviewing and not for the sake of enlightening the reader. For instance, if I were doing this meta review by following a specific format I knew, it would taste like stale crackers and shit wine as that would be very dull and would cage the energy this review exhibits. It is almost metaphysical this energy, some even calling it spiritual, though for the sake of our existence within a realm of reality defines by realistic qualities, not spiritual ones, we will assume that this energy is the product of a positive chemical bursts of excitement and pleasure inside of our minds.
It is so easy, to pump out these paragraphs of words. I am at no time during this review so much as pausing more than 5 seconds every 7 or so lines, and even then I may be over-stating that pause. No, the act of reviewing appears to be somewhat of a natural flow rather than a bureaucratic formula or a scholarly art meant to be meticulously mastered as some may mistakenly believe.
So the act of reviewing, does it serve a purpose that is worthwhile? For me this purpose is 70% entertainment and 30% knowing where to spend your money. Many people use reviews for knowing if they are going to get their fortune's worth and in general you are not going to see a movie that got below a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. However, more than that, I believe most people utilize reviews not for their own financial interests (though that is a key factor) but instead for the sheer entertainment. Some reviews are cheesecakes you love for a few moments and remember as the wonderful flavors of thought they were. Others are the potato chips (as Egoraptor once called the difference between Castlevania 1 and 2) wherein they are merely, something to use for passing the time. You could spend an eternity trying to sift through and read all of the reviews which exist in our world. Imagine the many more reviews you would have to deal with if there were more worlds - no living being could keep up and even a quantum computer may take a solid few hours to keep up.
Entertainment first, focus on helping the consumer spend money second, is what I believe reviews are truly intended to be and truly used for. It is a mistake in my eyes for a reviewer to view their self as an almighty almanac of quality that must be relied on in order to not waste one's fortune. On a general level that may be the case looking at the collective whole of reviewers; but on an individual level, when someone takes the time to read a WHOLE review and not just the 25 words or less version, that person is not reading for the monetary value anymore but instead reading for the entertainment value.
To this end I believe is is abundantly clear that reviewers are a quasi-entertainer of sorts. I say quasi, because it is quite ironic to view the critics of an entertainer's entertainment as themselves entertainers and many would view them as the exact opposite of an entertainer. I would not want to outright cast reviews as definitive entertainers in some sort of weird entertainment-critic paradox, but instead would say they are half-way entertainers but not quite. See, a critic is held back by the fact they HAVE to be witty and cannot merely go for some abstract ridiculousness, while an entertainer can do whatever the hell they want to.
Overall, reviewing as an act has to me felt overly self-absorbed because critics convince themselves they MUST truly be the authorities on quality just because they have experience and scholarly training. Experience and scholarly training might make you a definitive expert if you were say, an engineer for a bomber on an air force base; but that is not nearly as true for something so absolutely qualitative in nature as a review. Unless you are some weird other field of reviewer for the quality of manuals on building architecture or how to do taxes, you are most likely reviewing a piece of entertainment or something abstract or even philosophical in nature and to this end, your review is not going to be concrete. How can you claim to have a concrete review of something which is by its very nature, not concrete. Reviewing is not particularly scientific beyond its qualitative research and overall relies on the opinions of the reviewer. The years of experience and scholarly training the reviewer has gone through hones the reviewer in their eloquence and their ability to express themselves wisely.
But just because someone is wise and eloquent does not mean their rhetorical abilities are in themselves suddenly a valuable philosopher's stone of scientific cohesive concrete analysis. Far from it, I would argue because a reviewer can, and only can, express their feelings. You are shaped by your environment and your viewpoints you are brought up under whether they are philosophical or political in nature in addition to your socio-economic experiences. But the person is the person. You trust a person, not the arbiter of true quality, when it comes to reviews. When you trust a person, you are not really trusting them because of their scholarly ability or grand experiences in life. You trust them because you feel like they should be trusted and those feelings, whether they are a result of noticed credibility, relatability, or a common logical consensus, they are always going to be feelings. To this end, reviewing is simply the exploiting of one's own feelings in an eloquent and wise manner, as is in line with the historical tradition of rhetors balancing eloquence with wisdom.
This further could be utilized on politics to an extend seeing as it to is but a grand display of the feelings of people well-refined by experience and scholarly education and made clear through a balance of wisdom and eloquence. But that is but a side comment and merely reflects how politics to an extent connects with the field of reviewing only instead of reviewing entertainment it deals in reviewing the functions of government and its people.
Did this whole review, this nonstop spasm of typing which has gone on for roughly half an hour nearly non-stop, important? It is as important as you want it to be and as much as I want it to be. I could just say I conclude it is pointless and not important and I could do the exact reverse and justify either side of said point just as you could. But that is the thing - the importance of any review is entirely up to people. Reviews are but eloquently explained feelings on a topic combined with a tempered wisdom from experience and scholarly knowledge. How can you say feelings are or are not important? Is importance important? It is a philosophical question people cannot give an absolute answer on; merely people feel an absolute feeling which creates an answer inside themselves. Ultimately, all reviews are as important as the review and its readers deem it to be. And ultimately, while my feelings indicate this review is important, regardless of its cartoonish length, you may absolutely come to the reverse conclusion, and in truth, neither of us really know why; we merely feel why.
And as a final note, point ratings out of 10 or 100 are incredibly arbitrary especially on a topic like this.
I review the act of reviewing as a happy mushroom out of 6.
