easy to be hard

I think if you're honest about why you don't like it and how much you know about it, yes. Or if you're doing it in a non-serious fashion.

A lot of what I like least - almost all, in fact - is stuff I used to like, so I do know my way round it quite well and can empathise with the empathy so to speak.

just thinking about how often much more I like the writing on ILM when it's about what people like than when it's about what people don't like. I really hate it when people say, "well I wouldn't know anything about that 'cos I hate x cos I'm a big y guy" but I love it when people say "I love y and here's why."

leave it to me to use a phrase like "how often much more I like the writing" on a thread about what makes for good writing. how embarrassink.

s'ok i'm a big semi-literacy guy

I think a lot of criticism of stuff that people don't like is nonmusical: the Grateful Dead's fans were a bunch of smelly hippies, Sonic Youth are old, The Strokes and The White Stripes are overhyped, Britney has fake tits, nu-metal sucks because Fred Durst is a dick.

I like this kind of criticism because all that stuff does make a difference to how you hear something. Only guitar-shop-assholes and jazzbos pretend to make sense of bands in a holy pure music context, and that's not a lot of laffs. But you have to admit that such extra- musical criticism is too easy to reveal much most of the time.

Sonic Youth are old...Britney has fake tits

Swap these criticisms out and it gets interesting.