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From a creator's point of view, if they accept mindless criticism they'll be driven to improve their work even if they got no meaningful information from the criticism. If they accept mindless praise they'll be of the impression that they don't need to improve. Thus mindless praise leads to stagnation from a creator's point of view. Stagnation is bad, m'kay From a consumer's point of view ... I don't see any ill effects from mindless praise or criticism really.

The problem with mindless praise is that it is ineffective at making creators' works better as it does not point out what made the work good in the first place. I imagine Narcosis, an aspiring salty vn writer, is also thinking about the "hugbox" effect that exists in certain places to shield creators from any criticism - considering there is or at least was at some point a specific badge to put in your profile if you want honest criticism of your work at Lemmasoft, it's not like his fears are entirely unwarranted. It's a p. decent mirror with the problem of mindless bashing not helping you make your work better by pointing out what was bad. It's not like either has no information content; one tells you to stop making things in your current fashion, another tells you to continue in similar fashion. However, they would appear suboptimal from a creator's perspective. Outside of a creator's perspective, mindlessness on either side does not promote thoughtful discussion or trying to understand people that think different to you, and instead encourages forming groups around liking or not liking something. This is certainly one way of enjoying fiction, but not everyone appreciates it very much - not to mention polarization is where nuance, oh sweet nuance, goes right out the picture. We could use less of it, wherever we are.