But what about the #1 most popular gear topic of all time: What camera/lens should I buy? Highly subjective!
Absolutely, it's a complete fool's errand! The role of art criticism is to pick a needle out of a haystack, something you think is especially interesting, and suggest some ways that your readers might come to grips with it. It's always one step behind the artists and the art.
You've lost me at this point, because the way we'd be talking about photos (in a general sense, not specifically art criticism) is essentially practical. It's as practical as talking shop, only directed at the subject matter and aesthetics of a photo rather than its technicalities.
But what about the #1 most popular gear topic of all time: What camera/lens should I buy? Highly subjective!
I was hardly defending the usefulness of those posts, and there is a reason they are widely mocked. I'm going to a bodega in the Bronx, which polarizer should I take, the Japanese one or the German one?
To preserve my faith in humanity, I tell myself those questions are tongue in cheek, and move on.
But, to your larger point, my feelings, and that's all they are, about the desire some people obviously have to either talk about their photos or talk about someone else's photos, over and above the healthy level we already have here, were summarized in my original post so no need to rephrase them here. But, I might address your last two sentences to clarify what I was getting at.
the way we'd be talking about photos (in a general sense, not specifically art criticism) is essentially practical. It's as practical as talking shop, only directed at the subject matter and aesthetics of a photo rather than its technicalities.
It's only the "technicalities" that are practical. Criticism, as a form of teaching which strictly confines itself to the technicalities, can be useful to another photographer up to a point, but that is as far as you can go and still be helpful. I am not good at studio lighting, because it is something I have never learned (since I don't do studio work). To get a specific result requires a fairly specific lighting set up. That's craft, and it is teachable. That kind of thing might be of benefit here, though you can find it all day long elsewhere.
It is "talk", usually devolving into long winded obtuseness, "directed at the subject matter and aesthetics of a photo" that I personally find to be as useless as tits on a mule. You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.
To say that person "A" knows more about subject matter and "aesthetics" than person "B" is simply pernicious, at least beyond a certain point, a point so obvious to everyone that it needs no "talk".
This is nothing more than what someone likes, it has nothing to do with whether a photo is "good" or not. In the art world, anything becomes "good" if a critical mass of influential people decide they like it, for arbitrary reasons which reside wholly in their selves, not in the work. This does indeed rest on much "talk". Duchamp and his urinal is illustrative.
Reading Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word" on the world of art and art criticism would be more illuminating on this point, and more humorous, than anything I have the time or the skill for here.
If, on the other hand, someone has an unrepressable urge to correct the subject matter or aesthetics of any of the photos I might post here, I won't mind. They're just pictures, after all. Maybe it will, as you say, "help my readers come to grips with it" though I doubt that most are having trouble in this regard.
