Criticism is not dying, it is becoming disseminated. Everyone is a critic; and when all you have are critics, everything looks like literature.

What is negative criticism in a world with so much media?

When I was a teenager “friends” was a big thing, and you couldn’t avoid it, everyone talked about it the next day - water cooler conversations.

And while I didn’t hate friends (then at least, for me it didn’t age well) I can appreciate that it’s inane. So negative criticism in that context makes sense because it occupied such a huge part of our cultural experiences, and with limited channels in network TV, it occupied a spot that you could argue should have been taken up by something else. And there were a lot of things that almost everyone was subject too, negative criticism was a way to process that.

Now, your own thing exists out there, to watch that, no one is forcing you to watch stranger things.

Also, I notice “Noah Schnapp” is a standalone bullet point here. Between this and Quentin Tarantino’s takedown of Paul Daño, it really feels like some people are mad that bullying people has fallen out of favor.