Objective ratings don't exist

I am a frequenter of the anime database website MyAnimeList, and through this website I've come to recognize a lot of strange OCD-like quirks about the anime community; from its obsession with adherence to source material to its insistence on defining anime by country of origin. While I would love to pick apart many of these views, today I will be addressing a commonly misunderstood subject that even many outside of the anime community get wrong: objectivity and its relationship to reviews. I've seen the topic crop up on MAL numerous times, so I feel motivated to address the issue in full. Brace yourself now because this is going to be an incredibly lengthy post, but if you're a novice looking to delve into the world of media criticism, I highly recommend that you stick with it because I'm sure you'll probably learn a lot from this.

An "objective" critic.

The most critical problem at the heart of this topic is that people attempt to separate quality (as some kind of objective measurement) from their personal enjoyment, not realizing that they are actually referring to the same thing. By any meaningful definition of these terms, saying that a show is "good" is essentially the same as saying that you liked it. Before I make my case for this though, I should be clear with my definitions and what is actually meant by "objectivity", as much of this issue often boils down to semantic misunderstandings.

Objective - (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
Example of an objective statement: This anime's action scene was animated at full 24 frames per second.

Subjective - based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
Example of a subjective statement: This anime's action scene was really good because it was rendered at full 24 frames per second.

Notice that objective statements tend to be necessarily descriptive, as they merely describe an object or event as opposed to evaluating it, while subjective statements tend to be more qualitative; communicating to the listener how good or bad the writer personally found the material to be. Now as I mentioned previously, at the heart of this issue is the notion that people believe you can separate this qualitative measurement from subjectivity and somehow arrive at an objective (factual) measurement of quality. However, what they are most often really doing is conflating consensus opinion with objective facts, because even if everyone agrees on a particular judgment of a show, this still doesn't make the judgment in question objective; it just means that everyone happens to agree upon it. Take for example that a long time ago, it was the consensus belief that we live in a geocentric universe; that is to say we live in a universe where the Earth is at the center of all celestial bodies. We now obviously know this to be false, but more importantly it was also *always* false and at no point did reality change simply because a lot of people believed differently. Collective belief at no point turns into fact just because enough people can be persuaded to agree on something.

In the realm of art and entertainment media, qualitative statements are necessarily subjective because you cannot entirely remove one's personal biases from an evaluation of quality. I used the animation framerate example above because it is a great illustration of this point. Most people would consider an action scene rendered at 24 frames per second to be pretty visually impressive, but someone could still legitimately object and say that the action scene wasn't good because the choreography was lackluster, or the artwork was otherwise low-detail. Even if we restrict ourselves to solely evaluating the framerate of the scene and nothing else, someone might still object and say that 24 frames per second is outdated and looks bad, and the only way they can watch shows now is using smart TVs that can convert the video to 48 FPS using frame interpolation, or even using special computer software to achieve as high as 60 FPS. And relative to a 60 FPS standard, 24 frames per second would certainly pale in comparison as lackluster, but that's just it; even if we try to define a standard that is otherwise completely internally consistent with its measurements, the decision itself to accept that standard is still based on subjective opinion. Yes, 24 frames per second would "objectively" evaluate poorly against a 60 FPS standard, but maybe someone doesn't care about 60 FPS and views it as excessive, so they don't accept that standard in the first place. Maybe they would draw the line somewhere well below that, or maybe they actually prefer less frames. Maybe framerate doesn't even factor into their opinion at all so long as the majority of animations reach some moderately passable threshold, and the rest is just superficial icing on the cake. As I write this, there are film critics who staunchly dislike HFR (High Frame Rate, 48 FPS) film and prefer the standard, 24 FPS. They believe the higher framerate actually makes the film look worse, as if the motion is sped up and unnatural. One would think that more frames = smoother animation = superior animation, yet this is clearly not the case for them. Understand that when someone derives a feeling of pleasure from a particular action scene while citing the fact that it was animated at 24 frames per second as a justification for it, someone else could take that very same fact and have a completely opposite emotional response to it, and neither person would be technically incorrect for doing so. Either way, there isn't a wrong answer here because ultimately what standard someone decides on is a matter of opinion. And you know what? That's OK.

Well excuse me princess.

Just because quality is all a matter of opinion doesn't mean the conversation ends there. It seems as if many people fear the idea of admitting that their opinions are in fact "only" opinions and not facts; as if to make such an admission is to concede that all of their statements have now automatically lost all their value. That's just not the case. As I've mentioned previously, it turns out many people already share the same tastes on a variety of different subjects. Take the framerate example again; the vast majority of people would consider 24 FPS to be a high quality standard relative to the animation industry, so we can use this as a baseline to make a case for justifying our opinions and gain common ground with people from there. And if you can relate to other people's opinions, then their opinions can start to hold value for you. Even in cases where opinions disagree, this can often lead to more fruitful discussion because you might just gain insights and see something from a different perspective that you never noticed before. Many may find it hard to believe, but yes, people do actually change their opinions all the time; mine have certainly changed in the past as a result of seeing things from a different perspective. On the Internet, that may be hard to see because people have egos that they often choose to hide behind, but nonetheless it does happen, and I would wager beneath all the ego-stroking that goes on in a lot of arguments, almost everyone ends up reflecting at least a little bit after a heated debate.

So don't be afraid to admit that you have an opinion. Embrace it. Improve upon it. It's funny that people think the conversation often ends at, "Well that's just your opinion," because the reality is opinions are far more malleable than facts. Facts generally don't change, but opinions do, so make your case for your opinion. You might just find that you can change a few minds.

There is another problem I've encountered more recently though. There appears to be a second camp of critics that acknowledge their reviews are a matter of opinion, yet they still insist that it is useful to separate their personal opinion on some level from the score, which is problematic again for a number of reasons. To give an example, one critic made a statement to the effect of, "I thought Trigun was boring, but I gave it an 8/10." This score is perplexing because it seems to contradict the statement that precedes it.

As an anime belonging to the action genre, Trigun's goal is to entertain a particular audience that it might appeal to. If you are not entertained by it, then that should reflect in your score. At this point however, critics of this particular variety will usually point out that they're not rating based on enjoyment. The question then becomes though: what is even the utility of such a score? What usefulness does it serve if it no longer reflects the reason why people would be interested in watching the show in the first place? By basing a score on values that may drastically differ from your actual enjoyment of the anime, you effectively make your score incomprehensible to grasp to the average reader, since for all we know, an 8/10 could still mean it's bad to you, or a 3/10 could still be fun to watch. Who knows? I could understand if this were a documentary film that perhaps it would make more sense to base the score on how effectively it informs the viewer on some pressing social issue rather than strictly its entertainment value, but we are already working off of the foundation that this is an entertainment-based medium and therefore it should be judged on its entertainment value accordingly. Trigun is not a documentary. It is an action anime. Whatever ideas it brings to the table are only relevant insofar as they add to the entertainment value of the show.

The justification I've been presented with as to why these scores are useful is because they supposedly promote discussion and communal worth by separating "feelings" from the score and establishing a common shared standard. The biggest fault with this reasoning though lies in the suggestion that it is practical to remove one's "feelings" from the score. Since entertainment value is pretty much entirely subjectively determined (for reasons which I have already covered above), it is therefore inherently rooted in a person's feelings, so attempting to separate your feelings from the score effectively defeats its purpose in the first place, since the score no longer reflects its actual entertainment value but instead some arbitrarily-defined criteria.

Let's make something clear here: Nobody just likes stuff because they like stuff. There are always reasons behind it, even if viewers are poor at or completely incapable of expressing their reasoning. All opinions and/or feelings about a particular piece of media are rooted in facts about it on some level. That is, considerations like animation, plot, and voice acting are all what contribute to enjoyment; they are more or less inseparable from it. Some people are more lax at judging these criteria, and others are more critical, but exactly no one just likes something based on some nebulous visceral feeling they had about it which is completely removed from any actual facts about the media. The feelings we experience while watching a show are directly linked to the events occurring within it. So when critics say they are trying to separate their "feelings" from the score, I can only conclude that what they're really saying is that they are trying to separate the reasons why they like the series from liking it itself, which is a completely nonsensical notion. As I mentioned, these things are inseparable. You cannot like something when you take away the reasons for liking it, and likewise you cannot have reasons behind liking something if you don't actually like it. It is simply a self-defeating exercise to try and separate enjoyment from quality.

When a critic makes a statement like "I didn't like Trigun but I recognize that it's a good anime," what they are actually saying is that they recognize why other people might like this series, but they personally didn't. Make no mistake however that none of those reasons why others might have liked Trigun have anything to do with objectivity. These are just a collection of reasons that many people have come to agree upon as to why they like it, and the critic has grown a keen eye to recognizing these key elements in the narrative. When a critic can't reconcile their personal feelings with the consensus, this is where confusion often occurs, causing them to feel like they aren't justified in their own opinion. But failure to properly articulate why you might like a particular series in spite of others' hatred toward it or vice versa doesn't mean your opinion isn't justified; just that you may not be good at articulating why you feel the way that you do about the media.

In fact, it's perfectly reasonable to even recognize that one series has more flaws than another, while still coming to the conclusion that the former is better than the latter. This is because a good critic will recognize that scores don't start at a 10/10 by default and then get points deducted as mistakes are accumulated. Rather, they start with no score at all and earn/lose points as the story progresses, and sometimes the emotional and dramatic heights that the narrative reaches can counteract the mistakes that might be made along the way, so while one piece of media might suffer from fewer technical flaws compared to another example, it could still be considered inferior overall to its competitor simply because it doesn't hit its notes as high. You could write some very sophisticated and nuanced dialogue for example, but if you don't find a way to weave it into a narrative that makes it engaging to watch, then it still merely amounts to boredom and doesn't entitle you to being ranked above something like the Transformers movies just because it is more nuanced. At the end of the day, Michael Bay can still be more entertaining than you. Scenarios like this can sometimes be the catalyst for the previously-mentioned confusions. Certain critics might like something of less depth and therefore take their personal embarrassment of their taste to mean that they are objectively incorrect in their opinions. But they are not. Depth can certainly be a factor in determining quality, but it doesn't have to be the deciding factor.

Let's examine a previously-discussed point again; this time from another angle. "Objective" scores are useful because they supposedly promote discussion and communal worth by establishing a common shared standard. For starters, I don't see why this same goal of "discussion and communal worth" can't simply be accomplished by having a conversation like I already described earlier, wherein critics might agree on some things and disagree on others, but more importantly, what this really seems to be doing again is attempting to conceive of another consensus-based score and trying to pass it off as more "legitimate" or "credible" than other subjective scores because of it. In reality, it is just as opinionated as any other score, it's just that the author is trading some of his opinions and biases for the opinions and biases of others, or even worse, he is trading his opinions for an arbitrary standard that neither reflects the views of others nor his own. You don't arrive at a more credible or useful score just because you can recognize that your opinion might be more niche than others and compensate for that in the score accordingly. And to be certain, this is what the aforementioned critic was doing, because remember, he said, "I thought Trigun was boring, but I gave it an 8/10," which implies one of two possibilities: either he personally was not very entertained by it, but he put his personal opinions aside anyway for what he perceives the consensus to view as more valuable, or even though he didn't like it, he's basing the score on some arbitrary merits that don't necessarily reflect anyone's opinions (and let's not forget that he already conceded his scores don't reflect any kind of factual measurement of quality either). In the latter case, this renders the score completely useless, because at the end of the day, if the merit in question doesn't contribute to your enjoyment, and it wouldn't necessarily for anyone else either, then what is the value in acknowledging it and incorporating it into the score in the first place? Who even cares?

The audience response to your arbitrary score is in.

As for the former case, it's at least slightly more respectable, but why bother when we already have much more useful tools at our disposal for gauging the consensus view? MAL already has a system for automatically calculating the average aggregate score of an anime. Similarly, other websites like Metacritic do the same for other forms of media like movies and video games. So riddle me this: How should I interpret your apparently consensus-based score in cases where it doesn't actually mesh with the consensus? Since your score is only an approximation of what you think the consensus values and therefore can be prone to inaccuracies, why should I trust your score over what the actual consensus reads? The answer of course is that I shouldn't. In fact, it's a complete waste of time when I can just go straight to the more reliable source. Another irony of this whole approach is that by attempting to adjust your score to account for the consensus, you help throw the actual consensus calculations off. If everyone was busy trying to guess what the consensus thinks with their scores instead of leaving that type of measurement to the actual consensus calculations, you end up with one giant fabricated bubble where no one knows how each other really feels because everyone is trying to reflect what they think other people think rather than what they actually think. Just sit and think about that one for a while if you have to.

Let's take another step back though and examine scoring systems based on technical merits. The irony of a technical scoring system is that in its attempts to aim for more consistency, it makes things more inconsistent. Take for example a typical "divide and average" system that will usually be broken up into various sub-scores like art, sound, story, and characters, and then these scores are averaged together to get the final score. The first problem with this that many critics don't often consider is that different aspects should be weighted differently depending on the genre and premise of the show. As an example, art and animation might frequently weigh heavier into the score for an action series as opposed to a slice of life series. Since action choreography and visuals can often make or break a good action scene, the artwork becomes much more integral to the score than it normally would in a different genre. Whereas a slice of life series can get away with less while not detracting from the plot, an action series would suffer significantly more in contrast. Often times shows just don't all fit neatly into the same criteria and have to be judged differently according to their strengths. Yet, our previously described scoring system does not account for this. Instead, it treats all values equally regardless of circumstances. This can result in complications like one anime rating slightly higher than another despite that the critic may actually view the lower rated series as superior.

One of the most egregious examples I've seen of this type of scoring system is from a critic by the name of "roriconfan". One of his criteria for rating the story is "plausibility", of which he awarded 0 out of 2 points to Attack on Titan in his review for the anime. Obviously though, we know that Attack on Titan's premise isn't plausible; the author assumes that a certain level of suspension of disbelief should be considered as a given when delving into it, and the lack of realism in this respect should not by itself automatically detract from the entertainment value of the series. This is the problem the more specific you get with your sub-scores though; many of them just simply don't apply to the quality of every show. Plausibility might be relevant to consider for shows that are aiming for a greater sense of realism, but this is certainly not one of those cases. We're talking about giant zombie-like monstrosities devouring humans for pleasure here. In any case, as can hopefully be seen here, the more specific that technical scores get, the further away they get from actually accurately reflecting a show's entertainment value.

Now, some critics are smart enough to recognize these faults in an averaged system, so they attempt to account for it by adding an additional sub-score like "enjoyment" or "tilt" to balance things out, and while this is a nice improvement, I think in many cases a single additional sub-score may not be able to weight the overall score enough in the desired direction. In still some other scoring systems, these sub-scores are not factored into the overall score at all, which then sort of begs the question, do we really need to know these sub-scores when the overall score can ignore them anyway? It would seem that the overall score is all that really matters at that point, and the sub-scores merely become superfluous details.

But most of all regarding technical scoring systems is that you still don't really avoid the influence of pure subjectivity in the score no matter how much you may try to put everything into neatly concise measurements. While some measurements like framerate are easy enough to precisely quantify and rank, when you get into measurements like narrative quality, the waters become much murkier. Sure we can to some degree go down a checklist like whether a particular story adheres to traditional hallmarks of storytelling prose, such as a typical exposition setup, rising action, climax, and then falling action, and we can take into account variables like how many plot holes there might be or how many of the show's themes introduced are brought full circle, but even when a show may contain all of these storytelling elements while keeping plot holes on the down low, there is still a whole slew of subtle nuances that can derail the execution, which simply can't all be accounted for in neat little measurements, and ultimately whether one finds the execution satisfactory or not can very much boil down to raw personal preference. And similarly, the reverse can happen where an anime may not even adhere to traditional storytelling prose at all and still be received as a critical success. Hayao Miyazaki is one such director that I can recall achieving this with his movie entitled "My Neighbor Totoro", which has virtually no rising action, no conflict, and little exposition throughout at least 80% of the movie, and yet it is regarded as a masterpiece by many. Are technical rating systems really equipped to deal with anomalies like this? I would be willing to wager that at least some critics have to break their scoring systems in order to justify some of their scores when they adhere to strict standards like this. This is why as a general side note, I think it's a lot simpler and more practical when writing a review to just give a singular straightforward rating based on your overall response to the media, and as a further aside, critics should stop trying to shy away from acknowledging their feelings in their reviews. Entertainment should be attempting to invoke an emotional response from the viewer; it should emotionally resonate with its audience. Attempting to remove feelings from that equation with cold detached numbers in their place undermines the great majority of what entertainment is all about.

Still, some critics continually insist on some vague notion of "greatness" that is somehow separate from one's personal feelings. Let's examine some more arguments from another critic to see where the semantic confusion lies:

"I think you can admire something without liking it. I don't think it's particularly impossible to fathom the possibility of someone who acknowledges something's greatness but disregards it due to personal preferences."

In reality, this critic is actually making one of several possible conflations. What might be more accurate and consistent to say is that it's possible to admire a certain quality about something while still disliking it as a whole, or you can dislike a certain aspect about something while liking it as a whole. You can also like one aspect while disliking another, or you can acknowledge something's "greatness" relative to a consensus but not your own opinion. But to say that you can simultaneously think something is "good" and yet dislike it at the same time is a contradiction of terms. This is only possible when we're no longer strictly talking within the context of art and entertainment-based mediums. And as we're about to see, when we look at some examples that this critic gives in support of his statements, these types of conflations appear to hold true. Let's examine one of his examples.

"For instance, I think Djokovic is a magnificent tennis player, but I hate his play. I find it boring, uninspired, and lacks the finesse of the masters before him. That doesn't stop me from thinking he's a great player though."

As we see here, our critic is actually talking about two separate aspects of Djokovic while conflating them as the same thing. On the one hand he is evaluating Djokovic's skill as a player, while on the other he is judging Djokovic's entertainment value. Taking this context into consideration, it is not an equivalent analogy to strictly evaluating entertainment like a movie or anime.

In sports, there are clear predefined goals that are universally established as the rules of play from the outset. Since these rules define the sport, we can use them as universal standards for judging players, and thus objectively evaluate their skills against other players to a degree. If one player can score more points than another while they are playing against each other for example, this is a clear objective standard from which we can use to evaluate their skill. However, all of this is only made possible because there exists a predefined standard. The teams must score against each other and those with the highest scores always win. No team can simply disagree and declare themselves the victor when they scored less points. When it comes to entertainment in contrast, no such standard exists. One's entertainment value is necessarily mind-dependent; that is, the enjoyment one gets out of something is determined by his or her own personal thoughts, which can fluctuate from person-to-person, and therefore by definition makes it subjective. How much enjoyment one gets out of a particular piece of entertainment is not bound by any externally-imposed rules.

By essentially saying, "I think Djokovic is a good player, but I dislike him," our critic is not actually talking about the same thing throughout the entire statement; it's just easy to get lost in the semantics due to the ambiguities in the language. Again, the first part of this statement is evaluating Djokovic's skill as a player, while the second is evaluating his entertainment value. If we strip the first part away from the statement until we are only left with "I dislike Djokovic," we now have a fair analogy, because we are now strictly talking about the entertainment value of something (or in this case, someone). Remember, since entertainment mediums like anime do not possess any inherent "rules" for enjoyment, there exists no objective "skill" level to measure against. There is only one's subjective opinion about it. The important point of contrast to note here is that this particular statement only works in its own specific context. If we re-worded the statement to say, "I think Trigun is a good anime, but I dislike it," the statement becomes a contradiction, because now we are talking about the same thing in both parts of the statement but describing conflicting reactions to it. In both parts of the statement we are talking about the entertainment value of the product, but acting as if there exists an objective standard to measure against as well as another subjective one when no such dichotomy exists like there was in the previous statement. There is only the subjective measurement of entertainment value.

With all this in mind, we can finally conclude that what our guinea pig critic is actually doing here is admiring one aspect of Djokovic's character (his skill as a player), while disliking another (his entertainment value), but in neither case is he having a positive and negative response to the same thing at the same time. And furthermore, there exists no equivalent objective standard for measuring the "greatness" of an entertainment-based medium versus the skill level of a tennis player, as one is the measurement of entertainment value while the other is a measurement of how well a player can adhere to the predefined rules and goals of the sport. Let's move on to deconstructing his final statements:

"I'd like to stress the inherent difference between base preferences and substantive criticism. I may write off Homer's 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' as works I don't enjoy, but that's because I'm not a classicist, and not because I can come up with any substantive criticism on why Homer's works are bad."

And herein we reveal the heart of the problem: what he categorizes separately as "base preferences" and "substantive criticism" are really one and the same. What this is doing again is in some way covertly trying to dismiss some opinions as less legitimate than others when all that's really being argued is an appeal to popularity (IE, comparing people's personal preferences against that pesky consensus we've been talking about). Just because Homer's works might adhere to certain standards of narrative prose that many people have come to collectively agree upon as marks of quality does not make criticisms based around these attributes more "objective", or in his words more "substantive". It just means that more people are likely to agree with your preferences when you make appeals to these particular points rather than appealing to one that might be more niche like your preferred character traits in a protagonist. The reason these standards developed in the first place was because people collectively found that they tend to make media more appealing, but even so, they are not set in stone in the same way as the rules in a game of tennis, which again we can clearly see this demonstrated by the way critics have responded to My Neighbor Totoro. And I would say the only reason our example critic lacks any meaningful criticism against the Iliad and Odyssey in this case is not because the reasons he dislikes them are invalid in any sense, but because they are vague and inadequately described, which as I already covered earlier, is more a problem of failure to communicate rather than those reasons not actually existing. Recall what I said earlier regarding feelings not just existing in a vacuum independent of reasons behind them.

Whatever the case with our critic's possible confusions, I think it should also briefly be noted that to have a positive response to a particular work is to like it on some level, whether it be minor or major, simple or complex of an emotion. To simplify enjoyment down to only a rudimentary emotion equivalent to the kind of shallow pleasure you get from masturbation I think is too narrow and restrictive of a definition. Critics often tend to agree that deeper narratives are better because depth can make things more enjoyable, and the process of thinking critically from a piece of work can frequently provide a strange and unique form of pleasure unto itself. When you rate based on "enjoyment only", that doesn't have to mean you're only looking at it surface-deep, or just saying you liked something without really having a reason why. Aspects like plot, character development, animation, etc. all directly contribute to enjoyment. They are inseparable from it. The whole reason we rate based on these elements is because succeeding at them makes the story more enjoyable. If a character is poorly-developed, then this will impact your entertainment value negatively. If an action scene is slickly-choreographed, then your enjoyment will be impacted positively. If the quality of these attributes didn't actually impact anyone's enjoyment at all, then would anyone care what score you slap on them? Of course not. What we find likable about a particular plot, character, or art design is nonetheless subjective though, and attempting to treat that as if it isn't subjective is dishonest.

What people should really be asking for instead of "objective" "unbiased" reviews is that critics should provide justifications and reasons in support of their opinions, which is much more accurate to say and doesn't muddy the waters with terms that people don't really understand. Obviously when someone says "Trigun sucks because I didn't like it," this isn't very helpful, but not because their opinion is "biased" or isn't "objective"; it's because their opinion is vague and lacking reasons in support of it, and whether you may disagree with those reasons, that doesn't necessarily mean their opinion is illegitimate. If you really want "objective" reviews though, you can always get a taste of what to expect from Jim Sterling's "unbiased" review of Final Fantasy XIII.

The constant struggle and balancing act that I see many critics going through between what they call "quality versus enjoyment" is in actuality a struggle between their desire to have their opinion validated by others versus their desire to express their own true opinion. In essence, they want the score to be representative of how they feel about the media but at the same time they want it to be recognized as fair and legitimate by their peers. But in sacrificing part of your opinion in your score for what you think the consensus values more, you do not arrive at a more objective or unbiased score. You merely arrive at a score that more people will likely agree on. But popularity should never be mistaken for quality, and by attempting to remove your own feelings from the score, you are missing a fundamental point of what entertainment is all about.

Even if you still maintain that basing your score on consensus opinion has some kind of value or utility, does this really eliminate enjoyment from the equation? The reality is no, it still doesn't. All you've done is attempt to eliminate your personal enjoyment from the equation, but you're still evaluating based on standards that ultimately the consensus has deemed as enjoyable.

In the end, consensus or "objective" scores are impractical because they neither reflect any kind of factual measurement of the show's quality nor the author's true opinion on the show; it's just a nebulous mixture of partly the author's opinion combined with an approximation of what they think the consensus would/should be, which is itself also just an opinionated estimate. Ultimately if you're going to admit that your score is a reflection of opinion, I don't know why you wouldn't just fully embrace your own opinion. It's a lot easier to gauge how a particular show really is when critics are being upfront and honest about their opinions and not trying to kowtow to what they think other people have to say about the show. There is certainly plenty of discussion to be had about art and entertainment media even when people don't precisely agree on the standards of why they like it. Let's be clear here though: I'm not trying to force my opinions on anyone here. It's actually quite the opposite. I'm just pointing out what is really being said when people talk about objectivity, and what I'm actually advocating for is more diversity of opinion. I just want people to be honest about their own damn opinions. Stop obscuring your true opinion out of some concern for what other people might think, and embrace plurality of opinion in media. No score is "objective" and that is perfectly OK.

4/8/2015 Footnote: After analyzing this subject in more detail I realized that while my overall conclusions are still correct, some of my underlying reasoning building up to them was flawed and I might have been previously misinterpreting the views of certain critics quoted in this article, so I have now gone back and completely rewritten several paragraphs to (hopefully) remedy these errors and better clarify my points. I may also continue to make adjustments as I review this article again, since this can get to be a complicated subject and I want to eliminate as much ambiguity as I can.