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Two “Critiques” That Aren’t

—Kelson Vibber, 2010-07-02

I am so tired of “critiques” that boil down to one of the following:

I have no use for or interest in this, therefore no-one does or should.
Pop culture was so much better during my formative years than the crap they put out today.

These are, to put it mildly, a load of bull.

“I have no use for it, so no one does.”

So you don’t have a use for it. Other people have different interests than you do. They also have different needs than you do. You might not need a roto-rooter, but a plumber is going to find it very useful.

This one really infuriates me when it comes from supposed techies. So you don’t have a use for a touchscreen with your giant desktop setup with a wall of six monitors. That doesn’t mean touchscreens can’t be useful on, say, handheld devices, or a small wall unit in the kitchen. There’s a reason this xkcd strip rings true.

"We got Linux running on machines with 4096 CPUs!" "Can it do smooth full-screen Flash video?" "No, but who uses THAT?"

Source: Supported Features

“Pop culture was so much better during my formative years!”

There was plenty of crap back in the day, too. You’ve just had time to forget the mediocre, while the good stuff has stood the test of time. Not everyone who wrote plays during Shakespeare’s time was a great playwright, and not every movie produced before Star Wars was a great work of art.

Plus, y’know, they were *your formative years*. Of course you’re going to like stuff from that era better, because that’s *what shaped your tastes*.

Life

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Originally posted at K-Squared Ramblings

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