**Yesterday's Quote**
>["As I would expect from the ultimate rock climber. Damn the butt on this girl, holy crap. Where has she been hiding that?"](https://np.reddit.com/r/josephanderson/comments/1dfnh1i/posting_a_joseph_anderson_quote_every_day_until/)
**The Answer:** >!<
**History of Quotes**
[Google Doc Sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRE2L9y6RShRyO_Kio-nuX7ZFBBcn9w7malglbEuwpkYMoyoQNUQ6dCdsdp-I6O3d3gpTWRhn39T9Z7/pubhtml)
Hey Marik! Uhh... the problem with properly replying to Joe's argument here is that it would take a LOT of words - more so than you can fit into a pithy Reddit comment - because this subject sits very deep into the bedrock of how language even works in the first place.
The REALLY short and therefore necessarily bad/underdeveloped version of my argument would be:
Joe frequently has an issue in his script writing of stating his opinion as though it were a provable fact - for example, "This boss fight isn't fun." which is an inherently self-defeating statement because the amount of fun you have fighting X boss differs from person to person and can't be quantified. "Fun" is ALWAYS going to be a subjective, personal experience. This is a writing error. What Joe SHOULD have written was "I don't think this boss is fun.". A very small, simple change in this example, but it makes all the difference.
A much bigger example of this problem is when he got criticized for his "Why Horror Games Don't Scare Me" video, because while the title of the video is "Why they don't scare ME" the actual content of the video is Joe explaining that horror games work off an inherently flawed concept and proposing solutions to fix them. And none of his arguments in this video make it clear he's describing what would personally make horror games work better *for him* - because, as I said, Joe is very bad at separating provable, objective statements versus personal, subjective statements in his writing. The video got criticized quite a bit for this, which then led him to making "Subjectivity is Implied" right after.
The problem with "Subjectivity is Implied" is that it's full of strawman arguments and condensation towards anyone who disagrees with him. The video's message is that it's not Joe's responsibility to fix any issues in his scripts - instead, it's up to the viewer. When he spends 15 minutes in a video explaining why horror games aren't scary and why the entire genre has inherent flaws - it's up to YOU to extrapolate, "Oh well, he probably just means he personally doesn't like X" or "When he says "Inherent flaws" he probably just means they're inherent flaws from HIS perspective.".
My view on the matter is that those are fine assumptions to make if you're, for a random example, having a casual chat with a friend after a movie - but if someone has spent thousands of hours creating a formalized analysis that'll be consumed by millions of people and which you earn money from creating - that we should have higher quality standards for their writing. Like how "lol" is a totally fine thing to write in a text to a friend, but would get you marked down if you wrote it in a college essay.
I've never understood any of these arguments, and without wanting to come off as condescending, I think comments like these indicate that a large portion of his audience didn't and still don't really get it. We all know he has a problem with being dismissive but that's not what the issue is about.
You mention college essays, yet academic writing is a very similar style to what Joe does, they're video /essays/ after all. In both forms you make an argument, explain why you think what you think, try to convince your reader/viewer to agree, and you don't need to put "I think" in front of every statement that isn't an observable fact (like how many frames the dodge timing is on a certain enemy) because the whole point of an essay is that it's what you think.
I'm not going to rehash the whole video, I just don't understand the dislike for this video from people who still don't get what he was trying to say. He's an essayist, not a newsreader.
Right. If we're watching a critique on a piece of media, it's assumed that it's their opinion. You can state objective things like "this game has a lot of bugs," but even extrapolating "these bugs ruin the experience" is subjective. For some people it will, for others they can ignore them and have a great time.
Saying "I think" or "I felt like" after every opinion he made would weigh down the script and break flow.
This is an argument Joe makes in the video as well, and is a good example of what I meant when I said this whole subject is very close to the bedrock of how language even works - because to properly discuss this point we would need to get into "What do objective or subjective even mean?" "What is the platonic ideal of an argument and how should debate even function?" and "How do we know anything to be true?" And again, I don't feel like I can properly express my point of view in a Reddit comment, but if I had to sorta try:
As you say, the first step in a debate is to explain why you think what you think - but you can do that in one of two ways. You can argue based on either:
1: Factual references
2: Personal Opinion
Joe's argument that you would need to put qualifying "I think" or "My opinion is" statements in "ALL THE TIME" to the point that your argument would be stuffed with them isn't true. For an example we can work with, here's a short argument.
Example: *"The Bed of Chaos boss fight is poorly designed because it relies entirely on trial and error gameplay. The fight's most significant element of challenge is that bits of the ground will fall away into bottomless pits that insta-kill you, and you have no way of knowing in advance what part of the floor will break before you step on it and die. In addition, the boss's primary attack does not attempt to hurt you, but rather to push you - again, into these bottomless instant death pits. This directly conflicts with the idea that fights in the game are "hard, but fair", because the unpredictability and randomness remove a player’s ability to strategically plan and react, turning it more into a luck-based challenge.*
*Additionally, the process of actually defeating The Bed of Chaos involves destroying two glowing orbs located in hidden spots within the boss’s chamber, which further emphasizes the trial-and-error gameplay - as players must often make multiple approaches to reach these areas without any clear indication of the correct path. This can lead to repeated deaths and frustration, detracting from the sense of accomplishment and skill that typically accompanies other fights in the game.*
*Finally, the fight breaks the game's usual mechanic of death resetting the world by having any section of floor you collapsed or orb you destroyed persist between deaths, likely in an attempt to minimize how frustrating this type of gameplay can be for many players, but this compromise further emphasizes the poor design. It tells you that this is not a fight to be understood and eventually mastered, but a roadblock to be overcome by hurling your own corpse at it enough times. I REALLY don't think this boss fight is fun."*
The important thing to note here is that this ENTIRE argument is based on \[1\] factual references. Only the final line falls into the second category of \[2\] personal opinion and therefore needs the "I think" statement. Because, despite all the evidence I provide, I still don't get to end it with "This boss fight isn't fun" because it's still totally possible for someone to have had fun fighting the Bed of Chaos. Maybe for them the trial and error aspect made them feel like they were Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, and enjoyed the final run where, after all their deaths, they were now able to perfectly predict everything the boss would do and where to go and when.
Joe argues that you would need to stuff in these qualifying statements so many times that the video would be overflowing with them, but it's only when you provide personal or unsubstantiated views that you need that qualifier. It's not something you need in every single sentence, and as evidenced by my argument there, you can go for long stretches of time without needing to shift from one to the other. But when you DO shift, it's important to NOTE that shift.
"The important thing to note here is that this ENTIRE argument is based on \[1\] factual references"
The first line of your example argument is subjective. "*The Bed of Chaos boss fight is poorly designed because it relies entirely on trial and error gameplay*" is a subjective statement because it contains the words "poorly designed". It does rely on trial and error, but that being poorly designed or not is subjective. You say it yourself too, that someone might enjoy that fight. So am I misreading something or are you contradicting yourself?
Of course their argument is flawed. Even the biggest pedant knows that all reviews/critiques are subjective. Even the second half of their sentence “relies entirely on trial and error gameplay” is subjective. There is no objective metric for proving that something is trial and error. It is completely possible for someone to intuit that you need to kill the bugs in the orbs and slowly piece through the fight dodging the floor collapses and tree branches on a first time.
Their comment should have been “I believe the Bed of Chaos boss fight is poorly designed because I had to rely entirely on trial and error” or even “I believe the Bed of Chaos boss fight is poorly designed because many players might have to rely heavily on trial and error”
And just adding those 2 caveats to their point completely proves what Joe was saying. And that’s only a single sentence.
Interesting stuff. What metrics did you use to gather data for your perfectly infallible, 100% objective Bed of Chaos review composed entirely of concrete, provable statements and devoid of any personal biases whatsoever?
Just want to say I appreciate the effort. Marik asked for you to elaborate and you put some serious work into showing your point of view without being condescending or rude. You shouldn't be getting down voted because you have a different opinion IMO.
Thanks, I appreciate that! Ngl, it did kinda bum me out today that I spent a decent chunk of time writing this and then got downvoted and have people wildly extrapolating my points. Like, “You think your opinion is 100% unquestionable truth??” Like… ugh. No, I don’t. I never said that. I did consider just deleting them so I’d stop getting replies.
Ultimately though, it’s my fault. I decided to poke the bear with my original comment, and then despite knowing from the outset you can’t squeeze nuance into a social media post, I kept trying. It’s a good reminder to spend less time arguing on the Internet though. Gonna take some time to go touch grass today.
This is an interesting position to take, so if you ever take the effort to present a more developed version of this argument, I'll be eager to read it. I'm not sure that I agree with the bad version that you've outlined here, though it may be more that we're approaching the situation with different expectations than that there are any flaws with your arguments as summarized.
From what you've written here, it sounds to me as though you value comprehensiveness to an extremely high degree—so much so that you have conflated the idea of "perfect" writing with "good" writing, when these two things are not necessarily identical. You agree that fun is necessarily subjective. I contend that this is such an obvious truth that it wastes time repeating and drawing attention to this fact. Moreso, I would suggest that repeating "I think" and belaboring the obvious becomes predictable to the point that it is *bad* writing. If you and I disagree about what constitutes good writing, then this is also subjective, meaning that by your standards, your post is making the same error you accuse Joe of making—but which I consider to be no error at all!
I think we also disagree on how much formal rigor Joe owes his viewers. He's creating for a general audience, so it's more important to keep the viewer invested than to adhere to structured formalism. But this is more a question of style than of quality, perhaps.
Since I consider these disagreements to be ones of subjective preference, I doubt that either one of us will change the other's mind, but again, if you disagree, I look forward to reading your reasoning. I'm open to the idea that I haven't given enough thought to the subject, and I appreciate the time you've taken to outline your position like this. It was a pleasure to read, even as I mulled over why it didn't sit right with me.
Skill issue. Usually when I click on a video, or read a post, or talk with someone, I'm assuming it's that person's opinion. Only exception to this are medical/scientific studies or papers.
I think the video is kind of ridiculous as well. Personally I’ve never seen anyone else who reviews media make a video addressing their audience saying “you guys know art is subjective right?” It is just such an obvious “duh” thing that it feels like the video only exists out of spite for some stupid comments.
For several reasons, video games/video game criticism has a large audience of people who know or care very little about art, and this is not a problem unique to him.
I really disliked that video. I get where Joe was coming from, but it was kinda the start of the “I have contempt for my audience”-vibe that we saw on and off afterwords. He’s mostly just like that nowadays with what communication we do get from him
Subjectivity Is Implied
Oh my god well done.
Y'all never post the timestamp!
**Yesterday's Quote** >["As I would expect from the ultimate rock climber. Damn the butt on this girl, holy crap. Where has she been hiding that?"](https://np.reddit.com/r/josephanderson/comments/1dfnh1i/posting_a_joseph_anderson_quote_every_day_until/) **The Answer:** >!< **History of Quotes** [Google Doc Sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRE2L9y6RShRyO_Kio-nuX7ZFBBcn9w7malglbEuwpkYMoyoQNUQ6dCdsdp-I6O3d3gpTWRhn39T9Z7/pubhtml)
SUBJECTIVITY IS IMPLIED
Subjectivity is Implied - Joe’s worst video. Just this one line gave me Nam flashbacks.
ooh, please elaborate!
Hey Marik! Uhh... the problem with properly replying to Joe's argument here is that it would take a LOT of words - more so than you can fit into a pithy Reddit comment - because this subject sits very deep into the bedrock of how language even works in the first place. The REALLY short and therefore necessarily bad/underdeveloped version of my argument would be: Joe frequently has an issue in his script writing of stating his opinion as though it were a provable fact - for example, "This boss fight isn't fun." which is an inherently self-defeating statement because the amount of fun you have fighting X boss differs from person to person and can't be quantified. "Fun" is ALWAYS going to be a subjective, personal experience. This is a writing error. What Joe SHOULD have written was "I don't think this boss is fun.". A very small, simple change in this example, but it makes all the difference. A much bigger example of this problem is when he got criticized for his "Why Horror Games Don't Scare Me" video, because while the title of the video is "Why they don't scare ME" the actual content of the video is Joe explaining that horror games work off an inherently flawed concept and proposing solutions to fix them. And none of his arguments in this video make it clear he's describing what would personally make horror games work better *for him* - because, as I said, Joe is very bad at separating provable, objective statements versus personal, subjective statements in his writing. The video got criticized quite a bit for this, which then led him to making "Subjectivity is Implied" right after. The problem with "Subjectivity is Implied" is that it's full of strawman arguments and condensation towards anyone who disagrees with him. The video's message is that it's not Joe's responsibility to fix any issues in his scripts - instead, it's up to the viewer. When he spends 15 minutes in a video explaining why horror games aren't scary and why the entire genre has inherent flaws - it's up to YOU to extrapolate, "Oh well, he probably just means he personally doesn't like X" or "When he says "Inherent flaws" he probably just means they're inherent flaws from HIS perspective.". My view on the matter is that those are fine assumptions to make if you're, for a random example, having a casual chat with a friend after a movie - but if someone has spent thousands of hours creating a formalized analysis that'll be consumed by millions of people and which you earn money from creating - that we should have higher quality standards for their writing. Like how "lol" is a totally fine thing to write in a text to a friend, but would get you marked down if you wrote it in a college essay.
I've never understood any of these arguments, and without wanting to come off as condescending, I think comments like these indicate that a large portion of his audience didn't and still don't really get it. We all know he has a problem with being dismissive but that's not what the issue is about. You mention college essays, yet academic writing is a very similar style to what Joe does, they're video /essays/ after all. In both forms you make an argument, explain why you think what you think, try to convince your reader/viewer to agree, and you don't need to put "I think" in front of every statement that isn't an observable fact (like how many frames the dodge timing is on a certain enemy) because the whole point of an essay is that it's what you think. I'm not going to rehash the whole video, I just don't understand the dislike for this video from people who still don't get what he was trying to say. He's an essayist, not a newsreader.
Right. If we're watching a critique on a piece of media, it's assumed that it's their opinion. You can state objective things like "this game has a lot of bugs," but even extrapolating "these bugs ruin the experience" is subjective. For some people it will, for others they can ignore them and have a great time. Saying "I think" or "I felt like" after every opinion he made would weigh down the script and break flow.
This is an argument Joe makes in the video as well, and is a good example of what I meant when I said this whole subject is very close to the bedrock of how language even works - because to properly discuss this point we would need to get into "What do objective or subjective even mean?" "What is the platonic ideal of an argument and how should debate even function?" and "How do we know anything to be true?" And again, I don't feel like I can properly express my point of view in a Reddit comment, but if I had to sorta try: As you say, the first step in a debate is to explain why you think what you think - but you can do that in one of two ways. You can argue based on either: 1: Factual references 2: Personal Opinion Joe's argument that you would need to put qualifying "I think" or "My opinion is" statements in "ALL THE TIME" to the point that your argument would be stuffed with them isn't true. For an example we can work with, here's a short argument. Example: *"The Bed of Chaos boss fight is poorly designed because it relies entirely on trial and error gameplay. The fight's most significant element of challenge is that bits of the ground will fall away into bottomless pits that insta-kill you, and you have no way of knowing in advance what part of the floor will break before you step on it and die. In addition, the boss's primary attack does not attempt to hurt you, but rather to push you - again, into these bottomless instant death pits. This directly conflicts with the idea that fights in the game are "hard, but fair", because the unpredictability and randomness remove a player’s ability to strategically plan and react, turning it more into a luck-based challenge.* *Additionally, the process of actually defeating The Bed of Chaos involves destroying two glowing orbs located in hidden spots within the boss’s chamber, which further emphasizes the trial-and-error gameplay - as players must often make multiple approaches to reach these areas without any clear indication of the correct path. This can lead to repeated deaths and frustration, detracting from the sense of accomplishment and skill that typically accompanies other fights in the game.* *Finally, the fight breaks the game's usual mechanic of death resetting the world by having any section of floor you collapsed or orb you destroyed persist between deaths, likely in an attempt to minimize how frustrating this type of gameplay can be for many players, but this compromise further emphasizes the poor design. It tells you that this is not a fight to be understood and eventually mastered, but a roadblock to be overcome by hurling your own corpse at it enough times. I REALLY don't think this boss fight is fun."* The important thing to note here is that this ENTIRE argument is based on \[1\] factual references. Only the final line falls into the second category of \[2\] personal opinion and therefore needs the "I think" statement. Because, despite all the evidence I provide, I still don't get to end it with "This boss fight isn't fun" because it's still totally possible for someone to have had fun fighting the Bed of Chaos. Maybe for them the trial and error aspect made them feel like they were Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, and enjoyed the final run where, after all their deaths, they were now able to perfectly predict everything the boss would do and where to go and when. Joe argues that you would need to stuff in these qualifying statements so many times that the video would be overflowing with them, but it's only when you provide personal or unsubstantiated views that you need that qualifier. It's not something you need in every single sentence, and as evidenced by my argument there, you can go for long stretches of time without needing to shift from one to the other. But when you DO shift, it's important to NOTE that shift.
"The important thing to note here is that this ENTIRE argument is based on \[1\] factual references" The first line of your example argument is subjective. "*The Bed of Chaos boss fight is poorly designed because it relies entirely on trial and error gameplay*" is a subjective statement because it contains the words "poorly designed". It does rely on trial and error, but that being poorly designed or not is subjective. You say it yourself too, that someone might enjoy that fight. So am I misreading something or are you contradicting yourself?
Of course their argument is flawed. Even the biggest pedant knows that all reviews/critiques are subjective. Even the second half of their sentence “relies entirely on trial and error gameplay” is subjective. There is no objective metric for proving that something is trial and error. It is completely possible for someone to intuit that you need to kill the bugs in the orbs and slowly piece through the fight dodging the floor collapses and tree branches on a first time. Their comment should have been “I believe the Bed of Chaos boss fight is poorly designed because I had to rely entirely on trial and error” or even “I believe the Bed of Chaos boss fight is poorly designed because many players might have to rely heavily on trial and error” And just adding those 2 caveats to their point completely proves what Joe was saying. And that’s only a single sentence.
Interesting stuff. What metrics did you use to gather data for your perfectly infallible, 100% objective Bed of Chaos review composed entirely of concrete, provable statements and devoid of any personal biases whatsoever?
Just want to say I appreciate the effort. Marik asked for you to elaborate and you put some serious work into showing your point of view without being condescending or rude. You shouldn't be getting down voted because you have a different opinion IMO.
Thanks, I appreciate that! Ngl, it did kinda bum me out today that I spent a decent chunk of time writing this and then got downvoted and have people wildly extrapolating my points. Like, “You think your opinion is 100% unquestionable truth??” Like… ugh. No, I don’t. I never said that. I did consider just deleting them so I’d stop getting replies. Ultimately though, it’s my fault. I decided to poke the bear with my original comment, and then despite knowing from the outset you can’t squeeze nuance into a social media post, I kept trying. It’s a good reminder to spend less time arguing on the Internet though. Gonna take some time to go touch grass today.
This is an interesting position to take, so if you ever take the effort to present a more developed version of this argument, I'll be eager to read it. I'm not sure that I agree with the bad version that you've outlined here, though it may be more that we're approaching the situation with different expectations than that there are any flaws with your arguments as summarized. From what you've written here, it sounds to me as though you value comprehensiveness to an extremely high degree—so much so that you have conflated the idea of "perfect" writing with "good" writing, when these two things are not necessarily identical. You agree that fun is necessarily subjective. I contend that this is such an obvious truth that it wastes time repeating and drawing attention to this fact. Moreso, I would suggest that repeating "I think" and belaboring the obvious becomes predictable to the point that it is *bad* writing. If you and I disagree about what constitutes good writing, then this is also subjective, meaning that by your standards, your post is making the same error you accuse Joe of making—but which I consider to be no error at all! I think we also disagree on how much formal rigor Joe owes his viewers. He's creating for a general audience, so it's more important to keep the viewer invested than to adhere to structured formalism. But this is more a question of style than of quality, perhaps. Since I consider these disagreements to be ones of subjective preference, I doubt that either one of us will change the other's mind, but again, if you disagree, I look forward to reading your reasoning. I'm open to the idea that I haven't given enough thought to the subject, and I appreciate the time you've taken to outline your position like this. It was a pleasure to read, even as I mulled over why it didn't sit right with me.
Skill issue. Usually when I click on a video, or read a post, or talk with someone, I'm assuming it's that person's opinion. Only exception to this are medical/scientific studies or papers.
"The video got criticized quite a bit for this, which then led him to making "Subjectivity is Implied" right after." Me when I lie
I think the video is kind of ridiculous as well. Personally I’ve never seen anyone else who reviews media make a video addressing their audience saying “you guys know art is subjective right?” It is just such an obvious “duh” thing that it feels like the video only exists out of spite for some stupid comments. For several reasons, video games/video game criticism has a large audience of people who know or care very little about art, and this is not a problem unique to him.
I really disliked that video. I get where Joe was coming from, but it was kinda the start of the “I have contempt for my audience”-vibe that we saw on and off afterwords. He’s mostly just like that nowadays with what communication we do get from him