Thumbs up or thumbs down on a website is not a conversation. The danger is you get into a habit of mind where politics means giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to a website. The world is a much more complex place.
It is one of the most effective attitudes of the neurotic to measure thumbs down, so to speak, a real person by an ideal, since in doing so he can depreciate him as much as he wishes.
Everybody is so hungry for referrals, for 'likes.' I don't need to be liked. I don't need to be liked at all. I don't care if there's a button right there at the top of Drudge saying 'like' or 'dislike,' 'thumbs up,' 'thumbs down,' it doesn't mean anything.
They have no consciousness therefore. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use them for our own ends? Therefore we are free to kill them? Why? What is so special about the form of consciousness we recognize that makes killing a bearer of it a crime while killing an animal goes unpunished?...all this discussion of consciousness and whether animals have it is just a smokescreen. At bottom we protect our own kind. Thumbs up to human babies, thumbs down to veal calves.
As a critic, I try very hard to say exactly what I think. And in a medium in which we are well-known for the binary thumbs up and thumbs down, I try to be able to give the mixed review. But most pictures fall into that middle ground, so I wrestle over which way my thumb is going to turn. It's not flip.
There's a lot of griping and groaning about wanting to play half-baked new songs live, but you don't want it to just end up on YouTube with like 74 thumbs down: "This is the worst!"
We give this practice two thumbs down!
I want to be a part of something, and when we define movies now based on how they do on the weekend. We live in a society of "thumbs up, thumbs down."
When we fall in love, we hope - both egotistically and altruistically - that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and approved. Of course, love does not always bring approval: being seen may just as well lead to a thumbs-down and a season in hell.
In 1991, the latest year figures are available, most Americans, across all age groups, disapproved when asked the question: 'Everything considered, would you say that you approve or disapprove of wiretapping?' Some 67% of all 18-20 year olds gave the thumbs down, as did 68% of the Gen-X crowd...Boomers disapproved of wiretapping almost 3-to-1 while 67% of those 50 and over disapproved.
