This piece was fairly challenging for me to understand, so I'm not entirely sure that I fully understood the points Burn was making. I think the main idea he was trying to get across was how criticism has changed so drastically in the past fifty years. As technology has expanded and resources have become more accessible to people via the internet, people have become “critics” of virtually everything. The public has been invited to express its approval (or disapproval) about almost anything, causing the value of a critic lose its value.
I completely agree with Burn. There is a diminishing line between the general public and actual, legitimate critics. Don’t get me wrong – technology is great. It allows us to retrieve a lot of works that we wouldn’t have had available to us years ago. At the same time, I don’t like that there is this thin distinction between one person’s hardly-credible point of view and the plausible standpoint of a true critic. Having and sharing opinions is fine and dandy, but there is a difference between that and deeming oneself a genuine reviewer. Critics are people who the public should be able to go to when seeking new perspective. If we are provided with countless hollow opinions, with no evidence to support them, it will be no easy task fishing out the valid ones.
I think your critic had a completely different take than mine did. It's something I've never thought of, but it probably has a lot of relevance. With technology and the internet being what it is, "at home" critics are becoming more and more abundant. I know I hate reading an online post from a completely un-credible source.
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