Numbers make everything appear more concrete. We can all have positions on subjects or opinions about issues, but with data that could be interpreted to confirm our conclusions, our complaints as fans magically transform into sober critiques by objective analysts. This behavior is most prevalent in our cultural industries, where fans are constantly struggling to find tools to assess the quality of and understand the product in an objective manner. We all want to say more than “I don’t like that movie/book/comic because it didn’t appeal to me.” We want to be able to judge the product in a manner that is superficially fair and disinterested, especially if the facts just happen to correlate with our deeply held beliefs.
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