I Just Don't Like You: The Cultural Deletion of Constructive Criticism

The definition of constructive criticism is the idea of providing feedback in a constructive way, as to not attack the individual personally or their work, but citing specific examples that will help them create a better product.

Over the last decade, I've seen a shift radically towards creating a culture where negative feedback in any form seems to be repugnant -- even constructive criticism and any form of respectful public discourse for diametrically opposing viewpoints. Recently, YouTube removed the dislike button on videos, only displaying the thumbs up positive feedback icon to viewers. But is this really the best thing for us, especially as creators to only place value on positive feedback of our work? I should clarify that I do actually support YouTube's decision to remove the dislike button as it didn't offer any form of constructive criticism as I've defined here and was often abused.

Look, I'm not going to lie and say that negative feedback on anything I create isn't difficult to hear. I'm certainly a work in progress in this area. Take for example my very first movie poster I ever created (FIGURE 1). At the time, I thought it was the best thing to ever come out of Hollywood and was waiting for Marvel or Dreamworks to contact me. But my Director of Photography/Cinematographer at the time ripped it apart, which felt like a personal assault on me and my hard work. Though his criticism he offered wasn't constructive, instead more of a "boy that poster really sucks and makes us look amateur," it did cause me to take pause and consider it wasn't as good as I thought it was. The difference between constructive criticism and criticism is just as I opened this article with, "citing specific examples that will help make the work product better." So, I did take the criticism in and decide to actually learn how to properly create a movie poster (FIGURE 2). Now, I feel like I've definitely mastered how a proper movie poster should look and can certainly see a difference between then and now.

However, could my old DP have delivered his criticism in a more constructive way? Sure, and could I have reacted differently to it? Instead, seeing the undertone or small print for what he meant, of course I could have -- which is what I did.

Despite his delivery, which left much to be desired, had my old DP not said anything at all, I would have never discovered how bad that poster really was. I feel many of us have grown accustom to surrounding ourselves with people that will tell us what we want to hear and believe what we believe so anything they say reinforces our belief system and makes us feel right. For example, right-wing conservatives who prefer to only watch Breitbart News or Fox and left-wing liberals who prefer to only watch CNN. When it comes to news, I prefer to get my news from everywhere, including National Public Radio (NPR) or the BBC. I don't want to watch news that just supports my geopolitical or socio-economic viewpoints. I want the truth.

I'd opine that a lot of the problems we see manifesting on Capitol Hill and problems in our society on Main Street between supporters of different social issues only want to hear support for their side -- for their own beliefs. With social media, I'd argue it's exacerbating the problem, making it worse by allowing people to only see news, posts, and comments that support their opinion and views that do not challenge them to think differently or consider a different approach. The problem we have is when elected officials begin telling us what the "truth" is, not realizing it's their version of the truth or yours that they are spewing in hopes of winning your vote or campaign contributions, not the actual truth.

Of course there are situations where someone may conflate the two and instead of not liking what you've created, not like you as a person. But that's a different article for a different time. When this isn't the case and it's authentic, constructive criticism, we need to remember it isn't us they don't like, it's simply what we've made and how it can be made better.

I'll end this article with this quote from Francis Collins, "One must dig deeply into opposing points of view in order to know whether your own position remains defensible. Iron sharpens iron."

Figure 1: My first movie poster (Underdog Games)

Figure 2: My latest movie poster (DarkOps)