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I’m a Miami-based photographer + brand strategist focused on defying the odds and telling the dopest stories for clients who are interested in doing the same.
I believe stories are the vehicles that move culture forward and there’s nothing more important today than strengthening cultural integrity across the arts, urban environments, fashion, and hospitality.
Curiosity: Have we gone so far as critics that we have become terrible fans? Category: Sidebar
Our delusions of grandeur have convinced us that we’re better critics than we are fans.
I've spent my life maneuvering between two worlds, one where execution means everything, and another where perception is reality. In both, I've learned that having an opinion doesn’t mean you have expertise. Yet somewhere along the way, we've convinced ourselves that a Twitter account and a strong opinion make us qualified to rewrite Hollywood scripts, resequence Grammy-winning albums, and direct Oscar-nominated films from behind our phone screens.
I’ve never listened to *NSYNC and thought about their record sales, tour attendance numbers, or what records they’ve broken.
I’ve never watched “Paid in Full” and thought about the salary of cast members and who was “robbed” of a promising career, or how any of them should have navigated their careers after it became a cult classic.
I’ve never watched “The Tourist” with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp and thought “well, how did it do on Rotten Tomatoes?”
What would thoughts like that have to do with whether I enjoyed watching that film or listening to those songs?
We've lost the art of being a fan.
I'm talking about that pure experience of surrendering to entertainment, of allowing yourself to be moved without immediately telling the world how you would have done it better. When did we decide that consumption required immediate production?
Everyone's a critic armed with hot takes and the validation of likes and reposts.
We're living in this weird moment where everyone with a phone thinks they're Producers and A&R executives. Tyler dropped a new album? Within minutes, Twitter's flooded with people explaining how they would've structured the tracklist better, which producers they would've chosen, and why the mixing is off. Half these people couldn't operate Pro Tools if their life depended on it, or have created anything that more than ten people have experienced, but suddenly they're Quincy Jones. The democratization of information gave everyone better tools to express their opinions. However, now we’re starting to think that because we consume enough of something, we know how to recreate it or make an original version of it.
The professional entertainment industry, as flawed as it is, represents thousands of hours of training, years of failures, networks of collaboration, and systems of accountability that the average person has never experienced. When Kendrick’s setlist for the Super Bowl is released and there’s almost an exclusive focus on GNX, people scrutinized it from every angle to prove it was a better decision to do all of his hits instead. Mind you, Kendrick Lamar spent over a decade orchestrating producers, engineers, marketing teams, and distribution networks. He's proven to be one of the most successful at balancing artistic vision with commercial reality. He just completed a flawless victory against one of the most commercially successful artists in history. GNX is one of the most successful albums released since the pandemic, and I would bet Kendrick and his team considered how songs would sound in cars, in clubs, through earbuds, and on stadium speakers.
But we've reduced all of that complexity to "I could come up with a better set list than him."
I'm not saying that all professional work is beyond criticism. But we should be humble. More of us need to recognize that maybe the reason certain people are paid millions to entertain us is because they possess a rare combination of talent, training, and understanding that strong opinions and a smartphone can't replicate.
You know what we do now? Now we listen to albums like we're grading a final.
"The second verse on track seven needed more energy."
"This hook is too repetitive."
"I would've cut three songs and rearranged the whole middle section."
Cool. Where's your platinum plaque? Show me your hit records.
The irony is that our constant need to critique and "improve" everything we consume has made us terrible fans. We're so busy trying to prove our sophistication that we've forgotten how to be moved and simply enjoy. We've forgotten the simple pleasure of letting someone else drive the narrative and the artist to take us somewhere we couldn't go alone.
The first time I heard "Let God Sort Em Out," I didn't listen to it thinking about how I would have produced it differently or what features I would have chosen for the album. I just enjoyed the music. I got lost in the world of Clipse and the way they painted pictures of living that felt viscerally aspirational.
Being a fan requires a vulnerability that our current society discourages because being a fan also means admitting that someone else might know something you don't. It means accepting that you might not be the target audience for everything that comes from that artist or director. It means understanding that your individual taste, however refined you believe it to be, is not the universal standard by which all art should be measured
Being a fan forces your humility.
The difference between the cell phone critic and the professionals we love to second-guess is that the professionals have skin in the game. When they fail, they lose money, opportunities, and relationships. When social media critics are wrong, they can delete the post and move on to the next hot take or topic in a few hours. There's no accountability, no real stakes, no learning from failure, just the endless cycle of opinion without consequence and taking another shot at the prize of monetization.
This slick rant isn't about silencing criticism or creating an environment where artists are beyond reproach. Thoughtful criticism from people who understand the medium, who've studied the craft, who respect the process, that's valuable. But that's different from the reflexive contrarianism that social media rewards.
There’s nothing wrong with embracing the radical act of occasionally shutting up and enjoying the show. You can let yourself be entertained without immediately reaching for your phone to explain why it wasn't as good as it could have been; sometimes the most sophisticated response to art is simply to be affected by it.
Who knows, but maybe the people who have dedicated their lives to mastering their craft know something that can't be learned from just asking Grok or expressed in 280 characters.
Maybe it's time we remembered how to be fans again.
What do you think? Let me know your thoughts here.
And if you're feeling this, share it with someone who needs to read it.
More coming soon.