There’s a review app for everything. Every guy on the street is a pseudo-film critic with an AMC stubs membership and a letterboxd account. You walk into a restaurant and you see people taking artful photos of their food for a review on beli that maybe only three people will see. I stumble into a bookstore and there’s employees writing handwritten reviews and next to them, a college student typing a run-on sentence with way too many literary words on goodreads.

People loooooove a letterboxd, a beli, a musicboard (album of the year? rate your music??), a goodreads, outdoorsy, rotten tomatos…?, alltrails….

Endless endless endless pseudo-social media platforms to see what your friends thought about something. Endless endless news platforms that hire people to write in-depth reviews. Pitchfork top 100 songs, Apple Music’s top 100 artists…

The whole world is just vomiting out analysis of consumed content and …? I really don’t know how to feel about it. On one hand, I love it—it makes a lot of things more exciting; I was never a restaurant person, but after downloading beli, I’m so much more excited to explore new places and try new food. Does anyone really read my reviews? no. But honestly I’ve found that I don’t even really care. I love reviewing the albums I listen to on musicboard—I’ve always written them anyways, in my notes app, and now I have a whole world of people where at least one other person will like the same album and I can feel seen.

And don’t even get me started on letterboxd. Before 2024, i dont think I ever really watched movies outside of the occasional marvel movie or whatever disney movie my dad(?) wanted to drag us to. Now, I’m seeing every movie (sorry, film!!) that comes out and IN THEATRES and discussing them after and all that pizzazz

Are we just wired to want to share our thoughts with the world, and this is a good proxy for that? Or, is this some shallow trait, where we might not inherently enjoy something, but because of the possibility of having it be social / being read, we find much more inherent joy there?

Perhaps this is the natural human progress in dealing with loneliness. We’ve always processed experiences through sharing and discussion. Think: book clubs, movie nights, concerts, gathering at cafes to debate albums… it all used to be in person, but both because there are less of those around and it’s so much easier to find people with your very specific interests on the internet, we’ve found ourselves here, turning every app into a dating app.

Though, it likely depends on the person. why do you write reviews? do you think you really care about how eloquent you sound? do you care if anyone sees it, or uses it as an actual recommendation to check out?

oftentimes, i’ll think about how I’ll review something while I’m experiencing it (this is true for primarily food). I’m normally just not very critical or aware of the “quality” of whatever it is I’m consuming — it’s more just purely based on enjoyment. but now that there’s asshole-ish pseudo-intellectualism in the house, I’m suddenly noticing if the dish was too salty or if the service was good. maybe it just makes us more aware of what it is we’re experiencing.

Recently, I was sent this article by Sasha Chapin: how to like everything more (quotes below are from this article).

It’s cool to see how much of this I (and people I know) already do. Often times people will comment how I seem to like literally like every music and genre and I think its very much this sort of appreciation: the art and effort that was put in makes it worthy of me taking the additional time.

You might be surprised by how much internal variation the vocalist uses from phrase to phrase if you can get past just hearing it as “scream scream scream.” If you dare, try the same trick with the onslaught presented by this piece of music.

I think I write reviews on letterboxd / musicboard / etc. etc. for better appreciating things, actually, because I often struggle to actually legibilize how I feel about something other than “wow, it’s good”. When I’m inspired to write a review, especially for modalities I don’t have as much experience and appreciation for (i.e., films), I pay much more attention and end up enjoying it much more. I used to think movies were kind of a waste of time: you watch some third thing with someone else without actually getting to know that person any better and you’re sinking a huge amount of time into it. It’s only been the past year and a half I’ve begun to really appreciate the art in these movies and how much I actually inherently enjoy them.

And I try to make a habit of developing similar micro-obsessions: when I love a piece of work, I drill into it and find a few small details to worship. I find it multiplies my feeling about the larger piece.

I also just can’t enjoy things half-way, I too easily develop (macro?) obsessions of the content I consume. This is why I stopped reading book series or TV shows: I get too absorbed and do literally nothing else. The month I discovered Criminal Minds, I watched all 15 seasons in the span of a week and half… of finals week. But these stories envelop you into their whole world. And, if you’re someone who also looks for community, finding online groups of people who also love the same thing can be greatly gratifying. Again, a place where reviews can help.

The music of Future Islands, to me, takes on another level of tragedy and interest when you think about how they’re based in Baltimore. Similarly, it’s interesting to think about Lana del Rey’s past as middling singer-songwriter Lizzy Grant—to me, that makes White Dress a better song.

Finally, being kind of pretentious-broey-intellectual about things is kind of fun. Knowing what sample the artist is using or the film motif that the director is paying homage to does just actually make you like something more. Being able to use “mise en scene” in a sentence does actually feel fun (when used right). I think we should all allow ourselves a just a liiiittle bit of pretention, when the time feels right.

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(On that note, find recommendations of things I consume at this post, or on my musicboard and letterboxd)