Status Update 2/5/2026
Where Are All the Critics Going?
In a major hit to the field of criticism, the Washington Post announced massive layoffs to its staffing, including the complete elimination of its books section (Bezos orders layoffs at ‘Washington Post’ : NPR). This is another significant loss in an already unstable decade, in which similar major outlets have restructured or eliminated critic staff positions, (see Vanity Fair’s similar cuts, Vanity Fair Sets New Strategy Consolidating Hollywood and Politics).
I often find myself retreading the question, why do critics matter? Usually because it’s asked defensively, after negative reviews or in the wake of major layoffs. The arts are struggling, journalism is struggling, and caught in the middle, the critic is getting lost, slowly fading from public and communal access.
As critics are being cut from the payroll, the proliferation of content mill listicles grows. Reviews are condensed into “What to watch this Month,” “What’s new on streaming,” content tailored to Search Engine Optimization for easy clicks in an attention marketplace. Major outlets have had to adapt in that same landscape, slowly devolving the role of the critic to fit this model.
The long-term effect of this creep has been the thievery and replacement by AI. This is what leads to events like the infamous “Summer Reading List,” featuring 15 books that do not exist, syndicated into major outlets such as the Chicago Sun Times. (AI-generated summer reading list gets published in major newspapers : NPR).
Embarrassing as this is, it’s revealing of what these institutions regard the role of a critic as. Filler content for easy recommendations, in which art is a consumable pastime. A middle position between artist and audience requiring no expertise, just a summary of a plot-hook with some added themes. Nothing to say of craft, prose, or feeling. Only a transactional emotion for reading investment.
Alternatively, the rise of social media influencers are providing an easily co-opted platform, serving as advertiser in the performance of film critic. Seemingly independent in taste and opinion while being invited behind the scenes to produce content, invited to premiers, and provided a level of access that journalistic outlets would’ve treated with more ethical caution.
While critical content is finding algorithmic niches and successes on platforms like YouTube, the dependency on that same algorithm infects the work itself. Again, transforming content into hyper-stylized thumbnails and bloated run-times designed to maximize ads. Or the aestheticized video essay responding to a vague hot take that cites a few TikTok’s the creator watched, microphone in hand and purple lighting in the back. What engages thoughtfully with critical analysis and what succeeds in an attention economy rarely align and frequently contradict, the platform devours the content.
Even worse, the average audience is now going to sites like Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, and Letterboxd to decide whether a film is worth viewing or not. Which in each platform’s case is a subjective numbers-based equation entirely dependent on the userbase of each platform. The quality of each film is flattened into a star rating that somehow translates into whether a movie is worth leaving the house or not. And as each platform adapts to its market, the ratings will stratify further apart from consensus, leaving a movie with a 4.8/5 on Letterboxd and a 60% on Rotten Tomatoes.
In all of these cases, the role of the critic has been hijacked for the sake of the attention economy, which in turn favors the biggest buyers. The disruption of social media has pinned financial success on the movements of an algorithm. Meaning critics are dependent on mainstream pop culture to keep afloat, rather than acting counter to that mainstream. What’s left is a culture that is fixated on viral trends and hot takes on those trends. A narrative machine controlled by the algorithm, or in other words, our tech and entertainment monopolies, which are slowly combining together.
This can be seen in the slow collapse of nearly every existing art industry, film, books, theater, music, etc. In previous decades, the critic served as a studied navigator of medium. Someone able to view a wide variety of work, champion the under-recognized and bring an audience. The loss of the critic in the modern ecosystem is reflected by the gutting of the middle budget. Industries are becoming bifurcated, producing only gigantic blockbuster works and dumped streaming content. The center is collapsing as the two ends grow unsustainable. This is to the detriment of adult minded works, contemporary focused issues, marginalized representation, and the independent market.
I guess this is to ask the question I come back to constantly, why do we need critics? The problem identified here is the loss of cultural institutions. AI is wreaking havoc on the arts, not because it can replace artists but because capital does not respect artists. AI makes mistakes, creates slop, and provides nothing of substance. And yet, the critics who have built years of institutional knowledge are no longer present to regulate them.
Increasingly, we are drowning in a culture of meaninglessness, with art that speaks to market appeal, content designed for algorithms, and AI that is shaping both. Without critics, the market is drowning in the current of the mainstream, with no oppositional force to break it. Instead, the people propped up in the position of critics serve to aid that attention cycle.
I Googled “What’s out in January,” and the AI overview gave me a long list of tv shows and their respective streaming platforms, as well as 4 movies: The Strangers: Chapter 3, Stray Kids: The DominATE experience, Whistle, and The Moment. Nothing about genre, plot, or why I should even see them. Nothing to say about Korean director Park Chan-Wook’s No Other Choice, a hilarious and severe satire on how capitalism has broken masculine identity that crosses nationality to reflect modern culture. Nothing on The Testament of Ann Lee, a visually audacious film on the founder of the American Shaker religious movement with Amanda Seyfried in a critically lauded starring performance. Or The Voice of Hind Rajab, a dramatic film reacting to the ongoing Palestinian genocide, rooted in the small humanity of the real effort to rescue Palestinian child Hind Rajab amid Israel’s invasion of the Gaza strip. All three of which are 2025 movies slowly expanding to independent theaters.
See, I can make a listicle too.
A good critic is a human who has studied the long history of art to understand why humanity keeps turning to creation, in good times and bad. They spend time, labor, and passion to dive into the art world and fight for the works that challenge and transgress culture. They contextualize the political and cultural environment we exist in. They maintain a space in which people can interpret and debate, growing our intellectual and emotional capacity as individuals and as a collective consciousness.
We need critics to provide thoughtful interpretation of art, otherwise those who seek to interpret it for us will steal the opportunity.