IMDB user ratings of movies and why I ignore them

Many people miss the point of ratings, and all anybody cares about is their own rating as far as I can tell. I am sure there are people who don't have a mind of their own and just swallow everything critic consensus says, but they are in the minority. 

Critics aren't saying "this is an objective rating" they are subjectively rating the movie and giving the people information about what to expect. Basically whether a movie is worth spending money on. This is how it works with everything, hundreds of critics rating a movie subjectively and then coming out with an average that points to something more objective so that people have an idea of what might be worth watching and what might not be worth watching.

If all movies were free and everybody had unlimited time to watch everything, critics wouldn't be as important. 

We do the same thing here on IMDB 2, just at a much smaller scale. We find people that have common opinions and then take their recommendations into account and we end up watching good movies we might not have watched otherwise.

This is just the nature of art.

It is October and I am watching horror movies. Using IMDB is very resourceful for avoiding horror movies that are terrible and finding horror movies that are worth watching. This is why I push back on people complaining too much about IMDB ratings and critic ratings. They are a useful guide.