I don’t necessarily think so. Following individuals (granted that you are actually doing so, and not following just an individual’s “brand”) is kind of a better way to guarantee that you’re going to get a consistent perspective. If you just followed topics, oh, here’s this perspective, this perspective, this perspective, ahhh, and it all becomes so much noise. Now you have to engage with the kind of, surface level summation of so many people’s cited sources and comments. It becomes harder to judge, potentially, harder to understand.
It’s like if you were trying to find a good video game to play.
You could search by genre, right, or, by “topic”, and that might get you some stuff that’s similar, but if you’ve ever tried to browse the steam store by just tags alone, you’ll find pretty quick how useless it is.
So, maybe you go by publisher, or, likewise, by magazine, by news site. That might be decent, for finding similar games, through a publisher, right, but it’s kind of a toss-up. If you like street fighter 6, it’s a toss up whether or not you like any of capcom’s other games. Same thing could be said of most publishers. And I don’t think you’re going to find consistent perspectives, necessarily, from kotaku, or even really useful information. It is the kind of, MO of a news company to flatten every journalists’ output into a kind of unified, easily consumable, inoffensive package, to bump up readership numbers and ensure they keep getting review copies, and ensure they keep hitting deadlines that line up with, or come a day or two before, release dates.
So, then you just go to one singular journalist. Now you can trust their perspective, now you can understand their tastes and where they line up with you and where they don’t. What they are possibly more predisposed towards reviewing. This is easier if they’re a private entity, rather than part of a larger model. Or, you could start following a single studio, or a single developer. Now you can understand what they are likely to produce in the future, as viewed through the lens of their past catalogue. Do they produce point and clicks? First person horror? Do they make games with particular subject matters that you find fascinating, or do they just have a kind of vibe that you like?
So that’s kind of why it would make sense to follow specific people, instead of just kind of, crowdsourcing your topics, and then following those collectively defined topics. One will give you the more consistent set of answers about what you’re looking for, one will give you a much broader net, and maybe will inform you more of the “cultural zeitgeist”, insofar as it exists among people who also want to make posts on those topics, to people who only want to follow those topics, and not follow the posters themselves. And I would, broadly, say the consistency is more important than “accuracy”, not that I think you’re going to get either from following topics and not people.
I don’t necessarily think so. Following individuals (granted that you are actually doing so, and not following just an individual’s “brand”) is kind of a better way to guarantee that you’re going to get a consistent perspective. If you just followed topics, oh, here’s this perspective, this perspective, this perspective, ahhh, and it all becomes so much noise. Now you have to engage with the kind of, surface level summation of so many people’s cited sources and comments. It becomes harder to judge, potentially, harder to understand.
It’s like if you were trying to find a good video game to play.
You could search by genre, right, or, by “topic”, and that might get you some stuff that’s similar, but if you’ve ever tried to browse the steam store by just tags alone, you’ll find pretty quick how useless it is.
So, maybe you go by publisher, or, likewise, by magazine, by news site. That might be decent, for finding similar games, through a publisher, right, but it’s kind of a toss-up. If you like street fighter 6, it’s a toss up whether or not you like any of capcom’s other games. Same thing could be said of most publishers. And I don’t think you’re going to find consistent perspectives, necessarily, from kotaku, or even really useful information. It is the kind of, MO of a news company to flatten every journalists’ output into a kind of unified, easily consumable, inoffensive package, to bump up readership numbers and ensure they keep getting review copies, and ensure they keep hitting deadlines that line up with, or come a day or two before, release dates.
So, then you just go to one singular journalist. Now you can trust their perspective, now you can understand their tastes and where they line up with you and where they don’t. What they are possibly more predisposed towards reviewing. This is easier if they’re a private entity, rather than part of a larger model. Or, you could start following a single studio, or a single developer. Now you can understand what they are likely to produce in the future, as viewed through the lens of their past catalogue. Do they produce point and clicks? First person horror? Do they make games with particular subject matters that you find fascinating, or do they just have a kind of vibe that you like?
So that’s kind of why it would make sense to follow specific people, instead of just kind of, crowdsourcing your topics, and then following those collectively defined topics. One will give you the more consistent set of answers about what you’re looking for, one will give you a much broader net, and maybe will inform you more of the “cultural zeitgeist”, insofar as it exists among people who also want to make posts on those topics, to people who only want to follow those topics, and not follow the posters themselves. And I would, broadly, say the consistency is more important than “accuracy”, not that I think you’re going to get either from following topics and not people.