Comment by vunderba

The medium is hard to separate from the message; it is built in to threaded commenting by the voting system. People upvote the comments that best express ideas that they support and as a consequence it is usually hard to add to the most highly upvoted comment. But that is the most obvious comment to attach opposing views to. That leads to a predictable tick/tock thread structure where every 2nd post is thematically similar but every other post is contrary.

The irony here is present but better interpreted as the forum structure being biased towards criticism.

The original comment already contained its own irony, directing unfair criticism at critics. Hemingway wasn't exactly some impartial observer of human behavior here. He was butthurt that a published commentator once said something bad about his writing.

The reality of military operations, which Hemingway himself probably knew having served himself (though maybe the situation has changed as I can't claim familiarity with the specifics of how it worked over a century ago), is that the biggest critic of any unit involved in a battle post-battle is the unit itself. Every action is always followed by an after-action review, in which you go over what went well, what went wrong, what you should continue, and what you should change. It's neither unrelentingly positive nor negative. It's honest.

But for whatever reason, much of the creative class seems to think anyone who isn't able to do something themselves is universally unqualified to comment on the work of others. Plenty of rather obvious examples show this to be ridiculous. The top coaches and trainers throughout history were rarely great athletes themselves.

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Irony is often the language of truth.

Very accurate description. I think this gets missed sometimes. Sometimes you’re criticizing because you know a subject well and want to see it improved.

It is a real skill to critique a thing and not come off as complaining about it.

Good observation: The biggest critics are indeed often the biggest fans — but funnily enough often just in a consumerist way.

If you listen to interviees with great writers, musicians, painters or actors you will often find it surprising when they tell you which other arrists they like. That is because the people making the stuff often have a much more open mind about what constitutes interesting and/or good writing, music, paintings or acting.

To me as an practitioner it feels at time that these "enthusiastic consumer critics" are incredibly bitter about not being able to live from the art they love like the ones they critique, so they carve out their niche and give themselves self-worth by playing a strong role in the field they love.

With good critics this love is the predominant message, with bad critics it is the bitterness.

> Oh the irony - Sometimes people need to stfu and root for something without pointing out how it could be better. "Awesome! Did you think about..... STFU!"

There are many such people already, there are also many haters, and many people in the middle. This diversity is how humanity managed to get this far, we need all of them.

Feels like engaging with the logic and content of an argument is more in the spirit of this website than replying “stfu”.

"You should...."