I don’t remember where I read it, but once upon a time I came across the advice that one should never preface one’s opinions with “in my opinion” or “I think”, because it lessens the strength of the opinion and implies that your opinion is held with little conviction. It makes it appear that your opinions are easily malleable as opposed to being strongly-held beliefs. In some cases it even makes you appear apologetic for holding the opinion. The advice made sense to me at the time, and ever since then I’ve made an effort to avoid prefacing my opinions with disclaimers.

Since the entire point of an Amazon review is to tell other people your opinion of a product, it shouldn’t be necessary to put a disclaimer before opinionated statements. The reader should expect the review to be opinionated, since that’s what they’re for.

I haven’t read the review in question (what, no link?), but from the title it would seem that the author is doing a few things with the phrase “Not really beautiful, not really Garbage”. He’s making it clear that he wasn’t extremely happy with the album and at the same time it sounds like he’s using both the literal meaning and the proper noun meaning of Garbage to convey two things: the album isn’t totally bad, even if it’s not great, and it’s a departure from Garbage’s usual fare. Of course, I may be taking the meaning out of context since I don’t have the actual content of the review to look at.

Anyway, the Internet is full of opinions and getting pissed off about it is half the fun. Enjoy the anger. Tell Amazon.com you didn’t find the review helpful. Knock something over. Find something breakable that you don’t like anymore and break it. Or, even better, mold your anger into hatred and bottle it up for years and years waiting for just the right moment to let it all out in one gigantic atomic blast.

Or you could just use your anger as weblog fodder. That’s what I do.

Hmm. Well, I did realize while I was writing the article that I wasn’t writing particularly clearly or coherently. So let’s see about answering your points and clarifying.

Here’s something just on the “clarify” front, since you didn’t bring it up. I am talking about public fora here. I don’t hesitate to say ”’Eyes Wide Shut’ sucks” around the table with friends, and I wouldn’t put any provisos on it here on my site, which is the internet equivalent.

One part of my objection to flat statements on public fora is that they are useless. The chappy in question did elaborate further - finding a link is taking a while because Amazon is slow - but if I’m not filtering things through my bias, it was all in vague, pejorative terms. If you tell me that D&D sucks, I know nothing besides the fact that you don’t like it. If you tell me that you don’t like D&D because you don’t like using races endlessly recycled out of Tolkien and you think the class system is unrealistic, I at least know something about your gaming tastes and the game in question (assuming for the sake of argument I DIDN’T know. And, for that matter, that you did.) In my experience, when you recognize yourself as a subject in your opinion, you are far more likely to have thought about the whys and wherefores of your opinion.

On a related note, the provisos I usually add to my posts in public fora are not often apologetic. I apologize for my WORK all the time (much to my near-beating at the hands of my Intermediate Poetry Class) but my opinions less so. “I find” is a good proviso that isn’t too apologetic. However, usually my provisos are information about me that place the opinion in context. So, “Well, I have this irrational hatred of undead, but I found Vampire kinda…” or “I haven’t read the latest edition, but ‘Of Gods and Men’ pretty much sucked when I played it.” (Note: I hope and pray that there is no “latest edition” of ‘Of Gods and Men’.)

Oop, time to leave work. Will ponder and finish later.

The Truth Terry Pratchett:

“And something that distinguishes the Mr. Windlings of the universe is the term ‘in my humble opinion,’ which they think adds weight to their statements rather than indicating, in reality, ‘these are the mean little views of someone with the social grace of duckweed.’” pg. 187 footnote of the hardcover

Perhaps it is just me, but the option of stating one’s views publicly with provisos, or with anonymity, is largely the option of saying “I’m not able to defend this view, but I want to express it anyway.” This isn’t necessarily the case, but since too often people cannot reason well, and (at least in my case) most definitely cannot do so in short time and under pressure without warning, this has become the ad hoc and acceptable manner of avoiding trouble. Due to this, people who state their opinions boldly allowing themselves to be challenged, and who usually win those challenges or at least fail to lose them, garner greater respect and are accepted as having more wisdom. What that says of the beholders you have to determine for yourself. Or maybe I’ve walked so far out on this limb that it’s bent to the ground and when I press post it will hit me in the bum on the way back up, a la Rube Goldberg. We shall see.

In regards to your reasoning, you are correct, and could put a counter-post with your reasoning on Amazon. However, one might also consider that review “very useful” because it expresses concisely that the music is entirely different than the earlier albums. Perhaps untraceably attached to some ears.

As for your three necessities of net (and perhaps all) life, in regards to reading opinions:

1. Civility is largely mapped into good manners, and those are themselves subjective.
2. Subjectivity is sometimes assumed to be understood.
3. And a sense of humor may never be recognized and yet be evident if the perceiver has a different sense thereof. Humor is, after all, a subjective subject.

Or maybe I’m just being argumentative. I lost track some ways back.

Glad you enjoy the music, and laugh off the opinion with which you disagree. Or at least, so I can afford to advise when 3000 miles from your wrath.

Great CD. I always have a hard time choosing between it and Version 2.0 when I’m in the mood for Garbage. I also saw them when they came to Portland on the beautifulgarbage tour, and they are incredible live (well, I couldn’t really hear for a couple days after, but that’s part of the experience, right?).

Welcome to my net, Novel!

One thing I note that both you and wonko misinterpreted is my feelings—I’m not angry at all. I just thought it was ridiculous that the chappy thought he could decide that the band’s music was not the band’s music. It could have easily become a literary-theory-type musing on the meanings of words and the creations leave the control of the creator; however, I was headachy and weak, so I decided to go the easy way and worry over netiquette.

I actually have a very bad habit of coming out with a bold opinion, as you mention, and then discovering that it’s logically flawed and insupportable. Then I backpedal, because I have a deep-seated need to be right. I really don’t like this pattern in myself—and frankly, on the net, by the time I realize I was wrong, I could be surrounded by flamers, and backpedaling, and further discussion with non-flamers, is impossible. So I’ve become rather timid on the net, to avoid the pattern of “BLAH! No, umm, yeah, you’re right, I’m dumb, sorry, shit.” that I often follow in real life. In fact, I even feel like retracting this article, writ as it was in haste and headache. But that would be cowardly and stupid. If I’m going to shoot off my mouth without thinking about it, I might as well try to live with everyone correcting me.

And “in my humble opinion”, tangentially, has a very different flavor from “in my opinion.” “Humble” seems rather insincere and self-serving. If it were really humble, you wouldn’t be saying it. The other seems fairly unassuming and forthright.

I find it’s good to have earplugs as part of the experience. In my fairly limited experience, that is—the only really loud concert I’ve been to was Everclear’s concert at our college. But I could hear very well through earplugs, and had no trouble hearing the late-night showing of “Memento” I went to directly after :)

I’ve listened to ‘beautifulgarbage’ 2.5 times now - I only really can hear music the second time through, I find. I’m still not sure which of the songs that don’t get stuck in your head (Currently stuck in head: “Cherry Lips”) will mature in my ears. I like all the songs, but they haven’t quite settled yet. I do agree with the detractors on Amazon that the album isn’t very cohesive - but, frankly, I don’t really find that a flaw. It’s well paced, which is far more important to me. However, if I’m “in the mood for Garbage”, I’m probably angry, so I’m more likely to go for Garbage or Version 2.0, because of the cohesiveness. beautifulgarbage seems more cerebral.

Your frustration with a group of performer’s music being labeled as “not them” is most understandable, and unfortunately such labeling is all to common. It seems that these distinctions are more frequent with musicians than other artists. For example, many die-hard Metallica fans turned away from their beloved group after the release of Load, five years after the black album. Many people were angry that the guys had cut their hair and slightly changed their sound. Are musicians not supposed to change as people, as artists? I think it is safe to say this is an unfair expectation. On the other hand, not all of Picasso’s paintings were sureal, and yet no one denies they are all Picasso’s.

Oh wise, ejumacated blogger, don’t be offended by the poor grammar of a sleepy poster.

Yeah! I mean, all great bands change. The Beatles? (“I Think We’re Alone Now” to “Fool on the Hill” is a long ways!) U2? I mean, compare “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” to “Walk On”! If you don’t change, I’m not sure you can be great. Not to mention the fact that Garbage’s signature has always been inventiveness. If they stop inventing, wouldn’t that be the real betrayal of their artistic mission?

So in short, hear, hear and pip pip. Tally-ho.

Between friends, that’s a “Judge not lest ye be judged” sitch.

Don’t forget Radiohead. Every album they’ve released has had a very, very unique sound.

I’m very slow at picking up music. Did they [Radiohead] have a track on the Matrix soundtrack? scratches head stupidly

Nope. You probably heard their most popular single (and one of the most overplayed songs EVAR) “Creep” back in the day.

While still maintaining a feedbacky, indie-college-electronic, abstract, downbeat feel. Radiohead has a diverse but incredibly coherent body of work.

Hrm. I thought I’d heard one song of theirs somewhere and liked it, but that doesn’t sound familiar.

Do you think I would like it, DJ Rock Star? ;P You have, I think, a good idea of my tastes, and doubtless a better understanding of how they relate to the large worlds of music I have not tasted.

Forgot to say, welcome to my lovely time-wasting machine!