Do ýou find competitions distasteful?

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Specifically, competitions which are not based on purely objective measures (such as the fastest time, team with the most points, etc.) I'm talking about music, dance, and art competitions.

I've just never understood the point of putting things that are so individualistic and expressive up for a vote to a panel of judges. Everyone else seems to think I'm a bit odd in this respect. "Why don't you like compete?" they ask, as if competition is the most natural feeling in the world.

Well, "artistic" competitions you know, going in, that it's more subjective than objective. In some cases (e.g., the Olympics) politics was always a heavy factor. The competitors know this, so I suppose they just deal with it.

We could look at life the same way. Much of anything is a "competition" of some form or another, and for all the talk of competition bringing out the best in people, I'm not so sure. It seems to bring out the worst in me.

I don't know why recently gobbledygook literature is so popular and why it's so high-rated

I agree, I think art competitions are a nonsense........they're a little better when they use a large audience to get the scores rather than an elite group who think they know all about the canons of good taste. As a musician I have a hard time knowing how good I am.....audiences and individuals don't often give accurate feedback, though often folks approach me to say they liked my stuff, which can't all be sycophantic drivel. One acid test is to ask how much money I'm making from it - if people were happy to give me money for it, then that would be a pretty solid vote of confidence in the quality of the music......but I'm no marketer, and I know of lots of mediocre acts that have made a fortune, and lots of really good stuff from musicians who can barely afford to eat. You can't judge art, except in terms of what you personally like. You can sometimes tell whether an artist is using a particular technique adeptly or not, but you can't tell much else.

I make the music that I do primarily for myself. If there are people out there who like what I'm doing, then that means that I'm good enough for them.

I honestly don't care (or even know how to begin accounting for) how good I am on a broad perspective. In fact, I think the whole question is invalid. It all depends on what you value.

Classical music has a tendency to value intonation first, technique second, and artistry third. That is, however, definitely not a universal standard. There are fiddle masters out there who are exceptional musicians, yet those who would apply the classical version of "good" to their playing would run screaming (i.e., they can't get past less-than-perfect intonation). In some fiddle traditions, in fact, if you play in "perfect" intonation (from a classical music perspective), you are actually playing the tune with less aptitude.

To put this into a little context... I recently had a huge spat with a relatively famous violin player over the internet. At every turn, he threw his credentials in my face (that he had played for multiple presidents, that all kinds of well-respected musicians thought he was the best violinist in the world) and that, conversely, I had neither talent nor musical career to judge what he was doing. What a thing to say about someone you've never heard nor met! His arguments proceeded to get even worse and more ridiculous, and I actually had to block him from contacting me.

Dan Brown? He's a TERRIBLE writer! Ugh!

I can do without social competition and "beauty contests". Sports competition based purely on skill exercised while playing fair is virtuous and is a good thing for those who like that kind of challenge.

ruveyn

I think that competitions are pointless. What's the point of such competitions. Those people just get judged by their looks, anyways.

I've always preferred competing with myself. Well, it's not even that. I just like getting better at things. I know when I am, no need to measure against others.

I loathe competitions, particularly those I win. So I managed to make a great impression,
so effing what? At the end of the day I'm still alone.

J

I don't necessarily find it distasteful, just not helpful. I can't rely on the Oscars to guide me towards which movies are worth my time and which would be a waste of my 90 minutes (or 2.5 hours, in the case of many Oscar winning movies). I can't rely on the Grammys to tell me which songs are worth space on my ipod to download. I can't find any correlation between Grammy winning music and what sounds good to me. If I ever went to a Broadway play, I'm sure the Tonys would be no help in figuring out which one was worth the hefty ticket price.

Since I can't find any correlation between what wins prizes and what I like, I just pay no mind. When younger, I wrongly guessed that there was a negative correlation and I avoided prizewinning movies and music out of the assumption that the ones that didn't win prizes would be always better. But that didn't pan out either. Sometimes the winners really were better. And sometimes not. No correlation at all, either positive or negative. So I just gave up on the whole business and use the "cooked spaghetti thrown at the wall" approach towards choosing what art to explore. I choose all sorts of things at absolute random with no eye towards either going with confirmed winners nor towards avoiding the winners to find undiscovered and unjustly ignored gems. My pattern is to avoid pattern and pick at literal random. Sometimes things stick to me, like cooked spaghetti thrown on a wall. Sometimes, like some strands of spaghetti, they just peel off and fall to the floor, forgotten. Sometimes I get worthwhile stuff. Sometimes I've just wasted time and money. But prizewinners- or losers- don't seem to have any correlation with what I like or find meaningful.

I've always found competitions of any sort to be kinda pointless, but those that involve judging solely on opinion without anything measurable are REALLY pointless, IMO.

I can't ,and never have watched shows like American Idol, or Top Model, ect... Pointless, and needlessly dramatic.

I enjoyed competitions in my middle school and high school years, mainly because playing piano and clarinet were the only things I was ever really good at.

My experience with competing, whether it was auditioning for chair placement in my high school band, university "honor bands," summer music camp and other honors ensembles, was that the more I prepared for the kinds of over-the-top performance demands, the better a musician I became. I was top of my section at home and at the music camp I attended every summer, and in the honor band setting I was typically middle or upper-middle, considering those groups were the best music students statewide it wasn't a bad place to be. I was consistently near the top as an undergrad, but that was worth very little because my instructors insisted on beating my former fiery creative spirit out of me. But for a brief time, all those hours of playing scales and sight reading anything/everything I could get my hands on and working up REAL music (not high-school band crap) was just--bliss. There's nothing in the world quite like feeling invincible.

What happened over a long period of time is I became interested in extended playing techniques--circular breathing, multiphonics, note-bending, among other things--to the point that I was doing things no one else could do. I play in a volunteer orchestra where I'd sat next to an outstanding clarinetist who taught woodwinds at a university. One tune that we play has a section that features a Dixieland combo, and it always blew my mind how someone who had been playing as long as this old guy had couldn't precisely execute the rhythms nor play within a New Orleans idiom, not to mention the guy couldn't project over a couple of brass players. My competitive side kicked in really hard, and I managed to resist it for a year. Then the guy mysteriously disappeared from the orchestra, so it fell on me to cover all the solos.

So since I'm all growed up now, I feel no less competitive and always work towards being in the right place at the right time. All it means is I HAVE to show a lot more restraint than I did as a teenager.

I'd like to get into composition contests and festivals, as that kind of thing never seems to age out. The trouble is it's difficult to know exactly what the criteria are for judging those things, and I have no motivation to write something that isn't going anywhere. I did have one of my pieces presented at a non-competitive electroacoustic music festival. Mostly I was just proud to have something accepted SOMEWHERE, and for now those kinds of things are motivation enough to keep working.

There's a TON of technical factors that the judges take into account during dancing, figure skating, etc competitions.

Once you get a feel for how much skill is required to pull off and connect those movements, you start to discern between an imaginative but poorly executed routine and a conventional, but masterfully performed one.

Sloppy technique is sloppy technique, and can be seen as such by discerning observer.

Life is one big competition so maybe that's why I sometimes hate existing.

Seriously though, I do find most competitions pointless and some yes, even distasteful such as fashion designing. It's almost like they are competing for which model looks the best in the clothing rather than which of the outfits was designed the best overall. As for competitions to do with art, dance & music etc I don't understand how they can be judged because there are so many different forms and people always say that no art is wrong.

It's not about WHICH forms they use, it's about the finesse with which they're executed, as well as their relative complexity.

Balance, posture can be judged, proper utilization of intertia, exacting distance between you and your partner so that you seamlessly flow into the next movement...