most social tools tend to try to reduce emotional ideas to measurable concepts, and the simple truth is: there is no hard and fast truth to the concepts of “good” and “bad.” in the real world, everything is relative to its environment and the participant’s perception of both environment and experience.

on the net, sites try to give value to an object in the vacuum of the internet, without any emotional context, and the result is just stupid and arbitrary.

(how much the bar smells like an ashtray + how appropriate that feels in relation of what’s being played + the guy with a great ass next to me = 5 stars! dumb.)

so if you’re gonna do something like that, the judgement of good and bad needs to be removed or rejiggered into something more relative to the specific items being paired. it should be something more like this artist is right for this venue, and this is how many people think that.

even doing that, there needs to be a healthy reminder that this is art we’re talking about, and ignoring ratings systems is a great way to make something completely new happen.