Words > Numbers

i have seen the literification of hate. and it is clicky

the evil: Metacritic is a website that chronicles all of the numbers and ratings and letters and charts and graphs that make up Internet criticism and aggregates them into a collective "metascore," one each representing an individual work. The Godfather is 100 (i searched for Citizen Kane but the site only deals with recent releases. alarmingly, The Dark Knight was a result). Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE is 97 (the highest ranked music album on the site. it actually ties with Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose, an album i do rather enjoy, and How The West Was Won, a Led Zeppelin live album. i guess the ordering is alphabetical). Grey's Anatomy the Video Game is 65 (seems kind of high). there are also named tiers, appropriately color-coded relative to their... awesomeness i suppose. 80 and above is green. the categories here are "Universal Acclaim" - because if there is any one universal truth, it's Metacritic - and "Generally Positive Reviews." yellow is the color of mediocrity, or "Mixed or Average Reviews." red; the color of fire, spark, passion... and "Generally Negative Reviews"

the problem: numbers aren't representative or even indicative of opinions. in my earlier post concerning Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars' port to the PSP, i touched on the destructively hyperbolic effect that Metacritic and sites like it are having on quality and its perception. what follows is a(nother) prime example of violence inherent in the system


in 2001 Michael Jackson released what would become his final studio album, Invincible. its reception was less than stellar, as is its metascore: 51. one listed review in particular caught my eye, the second selection from Village Voice (the first being Xgau himself, who notably thought highly of the album, and actually mentions the article in question). Kogan's review is a good one. titled "The Man In The Distance," its insight into the work is schizophrenic, giving an appropriately analogous account of the album's seemingly self-aware duality. Kogan never recommends, and he never condemns, and his reactions are never, ever "mixed or average." he has enough class not to slap some arbitrary digital representation of his thoughts into a conclusion

but guess who didn't