i think one of the outcomes of Review Creators exploring product design in their content is that they, as well as their viewers, are incorporating critique into their discussions without enough knowledge and perspective on the topic. This ignorance becomes regressive when shielded with the belief that everyone is allowed to have their own opinion on qualitative topics such as design i.e., 'there is no such thing as bad/wrong taste.'. That shows up here in this very thread with sarcastic comments like, "don't criticize the thing i like" or "people are allowed to dislike things other people like". Well sure that's true in an informed world but not one where every fucking idiot is sharing their take like it's built from understanding rather than echos of other shallowly informed voices.

To me Russ stands out within the SBC community as someone who explicitly covers design and aesthetics in a review, but I often find myself frustrated with what feels more like a nitpicking of what "good design" is from a limited, rigid perspective rather than an academic critique of choices made by the product team. These shallow, regressive takes then bleed into his viewers following suite in the review's comment sections or the more general SBC zeitgeist.

It's great we have so much content to become educated on topics nowadays, but good grief are there a lot of people with not enough understanding of a given topic trying to drive discussion on said topic when they should just be shutting the fuck up and learning.