Release from Cultural Bondage

One of the examples from Ted Gioia’s chart titled “The Prisoners Have Been Released from Cultural Bondage.” that stood out to me was people constantly talk about movies, TV, and music, but newspapers and media outlets have fired most of their full-time critics. This stood out to me because I often check the ratings of a movie or show before watching it to see how well it is liked. But to see that full-time critics are being fired doesn’t surprise me. In today’s world, social media has taken over everything, so most people hear about new movies, shows, or music through social media apps. Also, people have come to dislike most professional critics because they are often harsh when commenting on different media. Since everyone is more connected through their phones people would rather hear the opinions of viewers from the general population. Receiving opinions from a large population instead of a few critics is much more trustworthy when making a decision on how to judge a piece of media. People going to other viewers to get an opinion on what they are interested in watching or listening to causes the need for full-time critics to diminish. With Artists and franchises having a platform, they can maintain a large and engaging fanbase. This allows for each fanbase to easily express their opinions and is accessible for anyone to view. One example of this would be the platform TikTok, whenever a new movie or show comes out there are thousands of people who make videos voicing their reactions. One show that just came out recently was Fallout and it has gotten really positive feed back across all platforms especially TikTok. Along with the videos itself that people post there are the comment sections that people show whether they agree or disagree with what the creator voices. This format is similar across most social media apps, allowing for people to receive feedback on anything from other normal viewers of media. In my opinion I think this trend is good in this case. I don’t think a select few should be able to make the critiques and ratings for all media that is displayed to the public. It is the general populations opinions that really matter when deciding if something is good or bad. Also fanbases have grown extremely large for all sorts of things and tend to voice strong opinions when they don’t like what is being released. I think people might even be able to connect more when discussing how they think about a movie, show, or music. Moving forward I think more people will continue to move away from looking at critics reviews other than the numbered rating on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. Gaining real fans reactions is easily accessible making full-time critics an unreliable source. The media industry is always changing, so there is no telling where it will go from here.