Subjectivity is a subject that has subjectively intrigued
me, but I fear to speak about it since I feel my opinion would be too
subjective to carry any import with anyone.
As simple as that, really.
Today, aggregates and consensus are far becoming outdated
concepts. Products and offerings are
coming up with niche, customization and personalization. Everyone has an opinion, a different and
intensely personal one on everything.
Well, to be fair, they always had it, but thanks to the lack of resources
they mercifully kept the opinions to themselves (I know, I know. The irony of me making this statement on a
crappy weblog hasn’t escaped me). But
now it’s complete chaos. A chaos most
discernable, with the year-end Listomania.
Thousands of reviewers and bloggers come out with tons of “Best of” year-end
lists. And there are no definitive
lists. There are categories, and sub
categories for everything – movies by genres, releases, budgets and awards,
books by genres, author types, nationalities, music again by genres (man, this
genre is a popular categorization method), indie/mainstream, artists,
nationalities. And yet, for all these varied
categories, individual people still manage to come up with lists that are
considerably different that the ones created by their counterparts. And as you get more and more niche, into
obscure categories, the difference becomes more marked.
The problem, then are these designated, and often,
self-declared Opinion Makers, and experts.
The whole point of critiquing and reviewing things are to be able to
communicate it to the masses. Not
everything has to be broken down into niche categories for select patrons
(ironically, one of the fallouts of this is that “mass-appeal” itself, is
becoming somewhat of a niche area). They
are too busy showing off their expertise and their understanding of “subtleties”
and “nuances” to bother about who they are making it for, and who would even
benefit from it.
The thing with opinion is, opinions these days are often
confused with epiphanies and earth shattering discoveries. The moment you have an opinion, you feel the
urge to share it with the word. And then
indulge, ever so often, in pointless opinion wars with like-minded addled
brained zealots (not to be confused with the opium wars of the 1800s, which, I
also suspect contained a lot of addled brained zealots). It’s like with the no. of choices you offer a
person. There is a sweet spot. Anything beyond that and you end up
discouraging anyone from even indulging.
It’s a kind of self-projection really. The World According to Me. Narcissism is the biggest by-product (or waste-product,
if you will) of the Internet Age. So
that’s it. My super subjective opinion
of an obscure phenomenon to fulfil my narcissistic desire to contribute
something worthless to this world in 2013.
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