Hello and welcome to another Side-Quest episode of Talk This! It’s Dangerous to Podcast Alone! It’s Emma’s turn to pick again, which means, as usual, we’re talking about something way too big to condense down to an hour. We try anyway.
As always, you can listen to our podcast basically anywhere you want. Check it out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Pandora (or head over to our episodes page for even more options). Or just listen below!
The Topic
What drives internet backlash? Why does it feel like criticism has become more personal and pointed (feeling betrayed by a company or seeking out staff to yell at when you dislike a product they made)? Was it always this way with popular creators, or have fans been more vocal lately? How does cancel culture play in to this? Why do we demand that the things we dislike disappear entirely?
On the other hand, why does it seem like so many people are so sensitive to criticism? Why does something they like have to be perfect? What with the ‘it’s just a game’ defense? What’s it mean when somebody says something like ‘it’s fictional, it doesn’t matter’? Is that correct? Why is it hard to accept someone with a different opinion than us?
Basically…what’s up with the internet, yo?
A Sample
M: Even among the comments that I see, where people are just expressing reasonable disagreement…it’s like, okay, this one comment is reasonable, but I have a strong feeling that you’ve gone down every tweet in this hashtag and posted this same sort of reasonable comment.
E: Yeah
M: And like, is it still a sort of reasonable comment if you’ve felt the need to say it to a hundred different strangers?
E: Yeah. I mean, I’ve seen that in practice before. Like, I’ll be looking at a hashtag for some reason and I’ll see the same person posting the same thing over and over again. Or I’ll be watching something on YouTube about something and I’ll see the same person on a ton of video, commenting the exact same…like you said, sort of reasonable take about something. But it does show a level of obsessiveness if you want to go out of your way to tell everybody that, right?
M: Yeah. Like it’s fine if you think the tree textures are bad. They are pretty bad. But it starts to get a little bit weird when you kinda want to quiet-yell that at everybody who’s talking about the game.
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Enjoy the episode! Tell us what you think in the comments or on social media. Make sure to check out last week’s episode and look forward to next week’s where we’re talking about Steins;Gate and Control.
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