Expressing criticism/understanding the importance of feedback (random rant/reflection)

Recently, Smosh streamed a live show exclusively on Kiswe. As usual, someone uploaded it to YouTube and a bunch of people saw it before it was taken down, and people have opinions. There's a lot of criticism of the show -- a lot of people saying it wasn't worth the price for various reasons -- and it got me thinking about how I express criticism. It's something I often think about, honestly.

I think it doesn't surprise anybody that I'm not a leader. I tend to go with the crowd on a lot of things. But recently, I've been trying to have more confidence in my opinions. Oftentimes, unless I have a very strongly negative opinion about something, I will adopt a more positive opinion of the media I consume and be hesitant to criticize the flaws. For example, when I went to see Barbie, I think I immediately recognized the flaws with the script and how it was trying to take on too much and gave Ken a little too much attention, but I wanted so badly to love it (and it is a very fun movie, okay?) that I neglected all that until somebody else brought up those points. And now, as you can see, I feel comfortable saying that I agree with all of those criticisms in the same breath as I'm saying that I enjoy the movie a lot.

In my review of the new Smosh live show, I was extremely positive. Even though I did have some traces of criticism in there (like saying that everybody kind of said the same jokes we were expecting), my tone was very positive. I still enjoyed it, but now that people are coming forth with their more negative opinions, I have been braver about acknowledging those flaws or weak points in the show.

At the end of the day, I think I'm just afraid to hurt people's feelings. When it's something like this, that has been hyped up so much and everybody worked so hard on, I feel bad about giving it a negative review. Perhaps that one time I got noticed on Twitter by Anthony Padilla himself because I was hating on Smosh: The Movie in 2019 scarred me for life, lol. But obviously, giving a negative review doesn't mean that you are being inconsiderate, although a lot of people online tend to do that. You can give constructive feedback.

What was hard for me to realize, before college, was just how important feedback is. I'm studying graphic design, and it's pretty important in that department. If you design a product that is hard to read, confusing, or just ineffective to the target demographic, you are going to need feedback in order to improve. If people just keep trying to be "polite" and give you only positive feedback, you will keep making bad designs, and whatever all of this is for will fail, or at least not be as successful as it could be. So, after taking a few classes for my major, I began thinking of these things more from the perspective of the YouTube content creator.

Since Anthony returned to Smosh, I've been keeping a personal ranking of their new sketches. Similar to a lot of other fans' rankings, the sketch "Sleepwalking Disaster" held the #1 spot on my list for a very long time (it was eventually dethroned by "Food Battle 2023"). Speaking with other fans, I expressed that I felt bad for ranking so many of the newer sketches lower than one that they had released so early on, because Ian and Anthony kept saying in members-only livestreams that they felt more and more with every video that they were finding their footing. I didn't want to diminish how cool that was, and I wanted to agree with them and believe that they were constantly improving on a perfectly linear scale. And one other person replied to me, basically saying, "why do you feel bad if it's true?"

That kind of made me realize just how much of a people-pleaser I am, to ignore my own opinions in favor of the feelings of these guys who don't even know I exist lol. And really, being a fan does not mean blindly thinking every video is better than the last. Giving proper feedback (while also being polite about it) is being a fan. It literally benefits them, even if it's negative!

In the same way that being mean about criticism can harm the content creator, not allowing yourself to give negative feedback where you feel it's applicable can also be harmful. If they don't know that the content is not the best it could be, then there's a lower chance that the audience is going to get what they're looking for. And being mean about it doesn't help either, because it's easy for them to dismiss it as hate instead of seeing it as a valuable critique.

And the fact is that it's hard to take criticism as a creator or artist, especially when you put a lot of work into something, but giving feedback in a considerate and constructive way makes it easier on them. You gotta do the old "compliment-critique-compliment sandwich" lol, even though you're just a random dude on the internet watching videos made by people who don't know you.

Going back to Smosh, another thing that made me realize the importance of feedback in this specific case was their Christmas live show from last year, "Under the Mistletoe". It's pretty much widely agreed upon in the fandom that it is the weakest of their shows to date, having multiple pacing issues, lacking focus, and ending up disappointing people as a result. They had rented out a professional soundstage for a couple hours to film the show, but a combination of segments running over their allotted time and the entire cast being very drunk made it more of a hindrance than anything. The VIP aftershow was shortened by a lot due to the time restriction and people felt that their money was wasted on the VIP package. There were some enjoyable parts of the show, for sure, but there's no doubt that it was kind of a disaster and didn't go as planned.

The feedback from the audience probably assisted in deciding what was going to change for their next live show. For one thing, they got rid of the alcohol, but they also replaced the interstitial bits (which tended to be passive and boring) with musical improv, which turned out great. The musical segments were improved, and the live band elevated the viewing experience. And then, there were of course some things that could have been done better in "Sleepover Live", but I saw some people giving very constructive feedback, pitching ideas on what could have been done better and what they really enjoyed. So I have no doubt that the next live show using that format will try to take those things into account and be even better.

I think that's really the key to giving effective and constructive feedback: to come from a perspective of wanting things to be better and being excited for improvements. I like being optimistic that content will only get better whenever they try something new (after all, it is in their best interest). Of course, you can be displeased with certain things, but being overly negative about it and acting like it spells the end of good content is probably less effective and harder to understand.

So yeah lol, I guess that's it. I don't even know what this was. I was just rambling. If you read it, I hope it was interesting.