It’s never seemed quite so dangerous to articulate critical judgment in public.
In 2020, Jill Mapes published a decidedly positive review of Taylor Swift’s Folklore that glancingly acknowledged the Pitchfork editor’s ambivalences about the album. Within hours, Mapes’s personal details were revealed online by Swift stans furious at her less-than-perfect allegiance to their idol; death threats expeditiously followed. In February of this year, after German dance critic Wiebke Hüster slammed, in print, Marco Goecke’s latest ballet, the choreographer responded with physical assault, publicly smearing dog feces over her face. It was thus perhaps not surprising when, in March, New York Times film critic A. O. Scott announced he was leaving his role, in part due to the general readership’s rapidly worsening intolerance to differing opinions. (He, too, has felt the wrath of online swarms, for voicing his hatred of Marvel movies.)
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