Stan whines about whining about whining

Hi there, long time no see.

This one will be somewhat on short side, but things may be crazier soon. Or they may end up fizzling up as usual.

Problem statement

It’s not a new phenomenon by any means, but I’ve spotted a lot of people acting like other people have no right to complain about stuff. While complaining about them.

Alright, that’s a little simplification of quite a broad subject, isn’t it. Let’s get a bit specific: I present an attempt at rebuttal of some common arguments against arguments against media. What is particularly confusing is that many of those are mangled version of sensible arguments. At any rate, here we go.

No Good Scotsman fallacy

Other people sharing my opinions that happen to do terrible things, including to authors of things involved and/or in motivation guided by our shared opinions, are not an argument against those opinions or voicing them by themselves.

Compare and contrast: sharing the opinion that terrible thing was right.

Non-serious business

I know it’s just a game, a movie, a book, whatever. You should read my complaints in the context of me knowing such a thing. If a hyperbole went too far, you can point that out by itself.

Also, you better make sure you never complained about anything of similar scale in a place where I can find it. The things that rattle us off may be different, but the feelings may be more similar than you may want them to be.

Compare and contrast: mentally troubled individuals taking things way beyond complaining.

Subjectivity of opinions

It’s possible a thing I like is a thing you dislike, or vice versa. We still can have a polite conversation about it, although it probably shouldn’t be an argument.

Changes of things compared to prior things

If authors brand something in the same vein to their previous works, caution should be advised in regards to changes. The entire point of having a brand is that we can predict how much we will enjoy a thing based on our experiences with prior things. Pulling a swerve with such is not particularly helpful to anyone, compared to possibility of designating a clear change. This does not mean that every case of a change between entries in a franchise is terrible, but again, caution should be applied.

A lot of the time this seems to come from the belief that audiences remember brand was a Thing (TM), but don’t actually remember much about it. In age of wikis, DVDs, streaming services and some illegal stuff, this belief seems increasingly unfounded.

You bought the thing, so you said you like it

This one is connected to what I call “the fundamental problem with large scale capitalism”, which is a flamewar ground that I’m not going to sit on today. Instead, I’m going to leapfrog it. I may actually like the thing as a whole while complaining as loud as possible about things that, I think, made me like it less.

Alright, enough of the ranting for now.