Blindboy’s latest podcast is a perfect example of why criticism matters and why he seems increasingly unable to take it.
He’s spent years preaching about internal validation, not caring what other people think and not seeking external approval. Yet one bad review of his play apparently bothered him enough to spend an entire podcast explaining why the critic is wrong.
The argument basically boils down to...if you like my work, you understand it; if you dislike it, you don't understand it. And if you explain why you dislike it, you're apparently insecure and threatened by the art.
That’s not intellectualism. It’s an unfalsifiable ego defence.
Someone can completely understand what you were trying to do and still think you did it badly. Understanding Surrealism, Absurdism or Postmodernism doesn't automatically make a three-hour play good.
Sometimes criticism isn't proof that you've created challenging art. Sometimes people just think the art isn't very good.
And ironically, spending an entire podcast desperately explaining why one critic's opinion doesn't matter makes it look like their opinion mattered quite a lot.
For someone who constantly tells everyone else not to seek external validation, Blindboy seems remarkably desperate for it when the validation disappears.
EDIT: Apparently this is now in the Top 10 posts of all time on the sub.
Which obviously means absolutely nothing. I don't care about upvotes, rankings, engagement or what strangers on the internet think. In fact, external validation is completely irrelevant to me.
I'm definitely not going to spend the next hour explaining why this proves everyone else is wrong. But obviously, if a post criticising someone suddenly gets this much attention, it must have hit a nerve. Anyway, Top 10 means nothing.
Nothing.I'm just mentioning it again because it means nothing.