This is so needed. This was a very encouraging article.
"Being a fan is all about bringing the enthusiasm. It’s being a champion of possibility. It’s believing in someone. And it’s contagious. When you’re around someone who is super excited about something, it washes over you. It feels good. You can’t help but want to bring the enthusiasm, too."
Stands in contrast to the Hemingway quote: "Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors."
It feels socially safe, easy, and destructive to be a critic.
I'd rather be a fan.
vunderba 2 hours ago [-]
> It feels socially safe, easy, and destructive to be a critic. I'd rather be a fan.
Trotting out absolute statements does no one any good. I could just as easily spin this on its head and say that it feels socially safe to always show blind enthusiasm for the latest trend lest you be labelled a "hater".
It feels like we're just redefining critic to be synonymous with cynic. There's no reason that you can't simultaneously be both fan and a critic of X.
_DeadFred_ 18 minutes ago [-]
If you're a real critic, absolutely. But most of what passes for criticism today is just hindsight dressed up as insight. It ignores the fact that choices are made in a fog, assumes outcomes were inevitable, and retroactively assigns blame. It feels like scorekeeping not being a rational/fair critic.
MrJohz 2 hours ago [-]
In fact, the best critics of something are often its biggest fans. Roger Ebert, for example, wrote some pretty critical pieces, but nobody can deny that he was driven primarily by a love of cinema. Or take politics: I've seen people complain that left-wing commentators were too critical of Biden when they should have been criticising Trump, but often it's easier — and more useful — to criticise the things you like in the hope that they will improve, rather than spending all your time criticising something you don't like that will never listen to you.
That said, it's still important to take the time to sing the praises of something you like. If Ebert had spent all his time talking down bad films, reading his columns would have been painful drudgery (see also: CinemaSins, Nostalgia Critic, and similar attempts at film-criticism-by-cynicism). A good critic wants their target to succeed, and celebrates when that happens.
RyanOD 14 minutes ago [-]
It is a real skill to critique a thing and not come off as complaining about it.
ChrisMarshallNY 2 hours ago [-]
I always liked Brendan Behan's quote:
“Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.”
nthingtohide 56 minutes ago [-]
Critics could be experts of past era who have seen it all and are now seeing the same mistakes being repeated.
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
-- André Gide
ChrisMarshallNY 31 minutes ago [-]
Love that quote!
Thanks!
pjc50 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, but .. there is no worse critic than a scorned fan. There's a lot of fandoms all around the world, and while they're mostly harmless fun the edges can get weird and dangerous. Or when fandoms collide.
HanClinto 2 hours ago [-]
Not entirely sure what you mean. Care to expound?
Are you talking about people who act out on their fandom by criticizing others? "Oh I'm a fan of X, therefore I'm a vocal critic of Y". I agree that such things are toxic -- fandom doesn't need to be a polemic.
I want to cultivate the kind of fandom that builds up without feeling a need to tear down others.
bombcar 2 hours ago [-]
They're referring to "anti fans". You see it with online personalities especially; the most rabid fans (often parasocial, think online streaming) are the ones who will become the biggest detractors or anti fans.
Most people are "oh that's fun to watch ok" and then when they don't like it anymore, they get bored and forget about it entirely.
The anti-fans continue to follow it, but rabidly hate it.
Think Syndrome from Incredibles. He's always been the biggest fan.
lukan 2 hours ago [-]
I rather think he or she means gamers for example, who send out death threats, because the developers introduced a new thing they don't like.
ChrisMarshallNY 2 hours ago [-]
Wasn't Selena killed by a scorned fan?
rubicon33 2 hours ago [-]
I agree but, doesn’t the world need critics?
I think of a company where young inspired engineers want to build new things all the time.
Their heart is in the right place but they need someone(s) to be respectfully critical since their efforts and time spent have very real impacts on the company.
phkahler 2 hours ago [-]
Critics maybe. Antagonists no.
rayiner 50 minutes ago [-]
The world needs critics, people who say “that’s stupid.” Because Sturgeon’s Law is real. 90% of everything is crap. So the people who calm everything crap, and help slow the enshitification of everything, serve a valuable social role.
mxmilkiib 2 hours ago [-]
it's easier to image a dystopia than an eutopia, or even utopia, depending how you see it
zupatol 2 hours ago [-]
There's a healthy way to be a critic, which is helping people find and enjoy works they didn't notice.
There are also unhealthy ways of being a fan, for example if you admire someone there's probably someone else you despise. It's much better to follow the title of the post and believe in people in general.
rubicon33 2 hours ago [-]
I imagine being a healthy critic is a skill, something personal to be worked on.
It’s just so easy to be critical and even if you have good intentions, being critical can take the wind out of a dreamers sails.
flanked-evergl 2 hours ago [-]
What we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.
(quoted)
nathan_compton 2 hours ago [-]
This seems like Chesterton to me. Good writer, but I take exception to his world view. We should simply doubt that which is warranted to doubt and be confident in that which warrants confidence. If modern people doubt truths more than people used to, perhaps its because those so-called truths aren't so obvious as some people would have you believe.
"But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether."
This just fundamentally misunderstands what aims are. They can neither be doubted or correct. I can doubt empirically, or epistemologically, but I can't doubt that I want to eat a doughnut or that I want to be healthy or that I want a world with less cruelty in it. It's a waste of time and energy to doubt these things, although I can try to line up all my desires and figure out how they stack up with one another when I try to make plans, the efficacy of which is in the realm of the believable. I can look at other people's actions, try to determine their desires, and decide whether to assist them or interfere with them or fight them, but when I do this its not a cosmic battle about truths. Its just two people acting out on their desires in a shared world.
svelle 3 hours ago [-]
I had a manager and mentor who was a fan of me. It felt amazing having someone who is actually rooting for you. Him cheering me on and giving me constructive feedback and building me up in a way no one did before that has fundamentally changed my professional and private personality, hopefully in a good way.
bicepjai 58 minutes ago [-]
I love the take on fandom, this is how I would want it. While this article portrays fandom as a pure, innocent and positive force, my experience shows it can have a darker side. In places like South India, fandom often evolves: fandom becomes factions, factions become gangs, gangs become political groups, and political groups become dynasties or kingdoms. This cycle limits leadership diversity and negatively impact governance and society. IMHO fandom isn’t always innocent; it can wield significant social and political influence, for better or worse.
Note: written with gpt4o
PaulHoule 2 hours ago [-]
I think the best thing I get out of social media such as Mastodon and Bluesky is finding people who get enthusiastic about me -- when somebody discovers my profile and then I see they read everything I've posted in the last month and they favorite 20% of it, I know I have a fan.
I know those folks exist on HN but HNers are more reserved and I only find out about them when they stand up for me against the haters.
bookofjoe 50 minutes ago [-]
I stand with Houle
bookofjoe 48 minutes ago [-]
Linked article above broken for me; this one works:
This woman founded Creative Mornings, which has been one of my most well-respected and beloved quasi-centralised organizations (I tend to have a bias for loving humane decentralized/horizontal orgs/movements, and Creative Mornings struck a delightful balance between order and chaos)
rfl890 3 hours ago [-]
Thought this was the Swiss Miss (hot chocolate powder) website for a second
dkh 3 hours ago [-]
You can be a fan of that too if you want
felixarba 3 hours ago [-]
This was wonderful. The choice to be a fan is within us all.
ChrisMarshallNY 2 hours ago [-]
I've always been a fan of enthusiasm. I find many people react badly to it, though; especially in tech. We have a lot of curmudgeons.
fullshark 1 hours ago [-]
We've become jaded by phony enthusiasm or people hijacking it for their own purposes. I agree it's bad, but this industry does seem to run on the enthusiasm of naive 20-40 year olds, the end result of that is many jaded 40+ year old curmudgeons.
ChrisMarshallNY 33 minutes ago [-]
What I have encountered, is a bit different.
There’s a fetching shade of gray, to my well-coiffed pompadour, and I find many younger folks are almost immediately hostile, before I’ve even had a chance to give them a reason to be.
Speaking only for myself, I am very enthusiastic about all kinds of things, and devote a great deal of effort towards helping folks out. There’s reasons for that, which is a story for another time. Suffice it to say that I’ve seen darker times, and that can add a lot of shine, to what others take for granted.
That said, I’ve also seen quite a bit of life, and have learned where a lot of the claymores are planted, so some of that “helping folks out,” is mentioning things like “Are you sure you want to pet that rattling snake?”.
bix6 3 hours ago [-]
“Having more people say, “We just want to make sure you can do your magic,” is what the world needs.“
Amen to that!
I’ve found early enthusiasm hard to come by. It really seems to pick up once others are onboard. But the initial 1-2 people make all the difference.
conception 2 hours ago [-]
This is a trick for event planning btw. Put up a “hey anyone wanna go to x?” Crickets. Quietly one on one find two or three people and then say “hey the four of us are doing x anyone else want in?” works a lot better. Most people want to know something is gonna succeed and avoid the risk of failure.
3 hours ago [-]
MrMcCall 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 17:00:19 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
"Being a fan is all about bringing the enthusiasm. It’s being a champion of possibility. It’s believing in someone. And it’s contagious. When you’re around someone who is super excited about something, it washes over you. It feels good. You can’t help but want to bring the enthusiasm, too."
Stands in contrast to the Hemingway quote: "Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors."
It feels socially safe, easy, and destructive to be a critic.
I'd rather be a fan.
Trotting out absolute statements does no one any good. I could just as easily spin this on its head and say that it feels socially safe to always show blind enthusiasm for the latest trend lest you be labelled a "hater".
It feels like we're just redefining critic to be synonymous with cynic. There's no reason that you can't simultaneously be both fan and a critic of X.
That said, it's still important to take the time to sing the praises of something you like. If Ebert had spent all his time talking down bad films, reading his columns would have been painful drudgery (see also: CinemaSins, Nostalgia Critic, and similar attempts at film-criticism-by-cynicism). A good critic wants their target to succeed, and celebrates when that happens.
“Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.”
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. -- André Gide
Thanks!
Are you talking about people who act out on their fandom by criticizing others? "Oh I'm a fan of X, therefore I'm a vocal critic of Y". I agree that such things are toxic -- fandom doesn't need to be a polemic.
I want to cultivate the kind of fandom that builds up without feeling a need to tear down others.
Most people are "oh that's fun to watch ok" and then when they don't like it anymore, they get bored and forget about it entirely.
The anti-fans continue to follow it, but rabidly hate it.
Think Syndrome from Incredibles. He's always been the biggest fan.
I think of a company where young inspired engineers want to build new things all the time.
Their heart is in the right place but they need someone(s) to be respectfully critical since their efforts and time spent have very real impacts on the company.
There are also unhealthy ways of being a fan, for example if you admire someone there's probably someone else you despise. It's much better to follow the title of the post and believe in people in general.
It’s just so easy to be critical and even if you have good intentions, being critical can take the wind out of a dreamers sails.
(quoted)
"But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether."
This just fundamentally misunderstands what aims are. They can neither be doubted or correct. I can doubt empirically, or epistemologically, but I can't doubt that I want to eat a doughnut or that I want to be healthy or that I want a world with less cruelty in it. It's a waste of time and energy to doubt these things, although I can try to line up all my desires and figure out how they stack up with one another when I try to make plans, the efficacy of which is in the realm of the believable. I can look at other people's actions, try to determine their desires, and decide whether to assist them or interfere with them or fight them, but when I do this its not a cosmic battle about truths. Its just two people acting out on their desires in a shared world.
I know those folks exist on HN but HNers are more reserved and I only find out about them when they stand up for me against the haters.
https://creativemornings.com/blog/a-love-letter-to-the-peopl...
There’s a fetching shade of gray, to my well-coiffed pompadour, and I find many younger folks are almost immediately hostile, before I’ve even had a chance to give them a reason to be.
Speaking only for myself, I am very enthusiastic about all kinds of things, and devote a great deal of effort towards helping folks out. There’s reasons for that, which is a story for another time. Suffice it to say that I’ve seen darker times, and that can add a lot of shine, to what others take for granted.
That said, I’ve also seen quite a bit of life, and have learned where a lot of the claymores are planted, so some of that “helping folks out,” is mentioning things like “Are you sure you want to pet that rattling snake?”.
Amen to that!
I’ve found early enthusiasm hard to come by. It really seems to pick up once others are onboard. But the initial 1-2 people make all the difference.