Comments on: How to Handle a Bad Review

By: Barm

Barm — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 11:57:41 +0000

The purpose of the record and gig reviews in the NME used to be to show how clever the reviewer was rather than to tell you anything about the music. It was extraordinarily sophisticated use of English with neologisms and similes all over the place. I am pretty sure the NME (if it’s still going) is just as wanky today, probably much more so.

By: Yvan Seth

Yvan Seth — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 23:07:52 +0000

“Snarky” is a word I grew up with back home in Australia – 80s. Mum used it, presumably it comes from her background too. Hardly a new word! Across the width of the planet though – isn’t English wonderful?

By: Tandleman

Tandleman — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:29:25 +0000

You think I was kidding about looking it up (though I guessed it from the context?)

It isn’t a word in common use in the Grim North.

By: Bailey

Bailey — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 09:58:42 +0000

(Blimey, alright Giles Brandreth — we’ve been using the internet for fifteen years and ‘snark’ is part of our everyday vocab!)

Snark revels in the nastiness — rudeness for its own sake, as a rhetorical exercise, which is really all about the wit of the writer rather than the place/thing they’re reviewing. Did someone mention AA Gill? We like to feel that a writer regrets having to slag a place/person/product off, if they have to do it at all.

By: Tandleman

Tandleman — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 09:55:10 +0000

So how would you draw the line between one and the other?

PS – I had to look up snark in the Urban Dictionary. You gettin down with the gang now?

By: Bailey

Bailey — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 07:55:24 +0000

Would be nice to be credited with intelligence in interpreting reviews, too: the review of Our Mutual Friend we read on the Google Play store which dismissed at as long, boring and with too many words isn’t great literary criticism, but will actually be helpful to people who share the tastes and viewpoint of the author.

By: Bailey

Bailey — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 07:53:50 +0000

Exactly. Either there’s no problem, in which case good will out, or there is a problem, and it needs to be acted on.

By: Bailey

Bailey — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 07:53:01 +0000

We don’t like reading really snarky reviews. Honest, sensitively written bad reviews we can handle, but snark… nah.

By: Ian Cann (@thebeercolonel)

Ian Cann (@thebeercolonel) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 14:27:10 +0000

No, you’re definitely right on that, it’s a point that Jay Rayner’s made too, a well written bad review is definitely more fun than a good one.

By: John H

John H — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 14:16:41 +0000

P.S. Is it just my schadenfreude or are bad reviews often more entertaining to read/write?