Experience; knowledge; understanding. When where and how we acquired these heavily dictate our subjective experience with... well, everything, including media and the art within.

Based on my own observations, the average person follows a very basic pattern and have not bothered to grow as a person beyond this. They want to absorb entertaining content with minimal energy. We all do at our core, but some of us can move beyond it. For those of us that haven't yet, our media conglomerates are happy to cater with over-saturation such as with Marvel. We can observe the market, but the average person literally doesn't care. Are they unaware of critical analysis skills? Is there no energy to ponder these things after a 10+h work day? Sometimes both. Perhaps neither.

The Rock was in a lot of famous movies and he has a great public personality. Now he is in low-quality spit-out productions because his face generates ~~money~~ nostalgia in his viewers. I can flip this from movies to video games as well with Nintendo. How delusional people were with Violet / Scarlet and the outrage that Palworld caused. PKMN Violet / Scarlet was one of the worst games I've played on the Nintendo Switch (which objectively it isn't but rather is more like the antithesis of what we're talking about... I sadly digress). As a game, it's terrible. But some people are eating up the story and pokemon experience. There was a common denominator amongst this group though, and they didn't care about the garbage quality of the game because they weren't experiencing it - they were experiencing their pokemon. Likewise my family praises a lot of movies I... rent for them. I always watch them and they're typically rehashed ideas featuring famous actor(s). I can barely tolerate the experience - Red Notice? It wasn't even ironically good where it's so bad it's good again, but they love it! They'll eat it up every time and then enjoy the social experience of talking about it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we have famous artists and critics because humans like to take the path of least resistance.

I'm still ultimately unsure what a good objective measurement would be for works of art, but I think it's something to do with how the piece may expose peoples thoughts and ideas. Perhaps not just as a socially engaging experience, but something that stirs your soul into a tasty broth, ya know? Something that causes an introspective change within. Outer Wilds, How to Read, The Good Place, these are all works of art to me under this premise.

So ya, I also have an intense interest in the subject and I'd love to hear your own thoughts on the matter :) Please, do ramble on~

Edit: It's a discussion, not a statement of fact ya downvotin' goobah and goobahs to be~