r/HonestHotTakes • u/BasedTakeOutbreak • 13h ago
casual hot take "Mid" means 5/10, not 7/10
I'n sick of people labelling a show or movie as mid, then when I look at what they rated it, they give it a 7/10.
Get it through your heads. "Mid" is short for "middle", and it's somewhat synonymous to "average".
5/10 is average.
6/10 is above average
7/10 is good but not great.
We should collectively agree on this.
Thank you.
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u/Square-Finish-1933 13h ago
There are 2 different types of ratings. 5 is the average, and then 7 is the average.
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u/That-Ad-6901 12h ago
“Mid” should not be insulted. It is incredibly frequent by definition. Most people are average, whether they realize it or not.
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u/Afraid_Equivalent_95 6h ago
There are people online who call conventionally attractive people 'mid' to troll them or something. It's pretty common in the rateme subs
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u/Purple-Blueberry3721 12h ago
I've seen people even call things that are genuinely good but not best-of-all-time "mid."
For example I've seen shonen anime enjoyers call Jujutsu Kaisen mid because they enjoyed other shonen slightly more. But Jujutsu Kaisen obviously isn't mid, it's merely not one of the greatest of all time.
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u/Admins_Always_Badmin 5m ago
...that is what mid is though. There are enough better ones out there that they don't see it on top of them but find it fine enough to not be crappy.
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u/The_Big_Mayonnaise 12h ago
Mid is the middle bracket. I generally look at it as 4 to 7 below Is bad above good. The only absolutes are 10 (god tier) and 1 utter trash.
So anything in the midrange is mid.
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u/Greenmello 12h ago
I think its the middle of the bell curve. If 1-10 is a scale of quality and most games fall between 5-10 with most being a 7 then you could consider 7 mid. 5 to me is at least half the game isnt competently made and i hope most games are better than that.
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u/ExtremeNebula729 12h ago
Bad: 1-3 Mid: 4-7 Good: 8-10
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u/EntrepreneurOne7195 12h ago edited 12h ago
Ancient argument with different phrasing. There needs to be a largely unused hierarchy of badness on the bottom of a 1-10 scale, and a disregard for subjectivity and personal taste at the high end, so a functional average of things worth consideration will be 7, not 5.
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u/Disastrous-Nail-640 11h ago
Think of it like grades. A 7/10 is a C, which is mid. A 5/10 is a F, which is bad.
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u/ADSWNJ 11h ago
Check out Net Promoter Score:
Net promoter score - Wikipedia
9 and 10 is good, 7 and 8 is meh, 6 and lower is poor.
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u/aeacurus 11h ago
It's just the American grading system, 70% is an average passing grade while anything below that is verging on failing and anything in the 80% and above is good
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u/wzrdx1911 11h ago
Mid is mediocre not middle lol. People just write the way it sounds
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u/knallpilzv2 10h ago
So? Mediocre would still be 5 or 6. Mediocre is middle of the road, quality wise.
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u/-antipode 12h ago edited 12h ago
That isn't how averages work and I honestly never really understand why people think this.
If you have a classroom of 2 students. And one got a 100 and another got a 90, the class average is not 50.
If only two games existed and one reviewed at 9 and one 10, video game average isn't 5.
Now you can argue that for your specific gaming scale a 5 is considered good enough. But thats you and your preference toward ratings and what each number means to you. Some journalists would agree. Vast majority dont seem to agree.
That isn't an average.
And when people say mid, they dont mean the middle value of a range. They mean, "meh." Its not a reference to statistical means or statistical median or even statistical modes.
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u/Human38562 11h ago
You can rate all movies such that the average is 5, so maybe that is how OP wants us to rate movies.
Obviously, scales are arbitrary though and there is no right or wrong scale.
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u/noahloveshiscats 8h ago
I feel like if you rate movies so you get an average of 5/10 you either watch every movie, are very bad at selecting movies to watch or have a flawed scale.
Because personally, I consider 5/10 to be neutral. Anything above I enjoyed, anything below I disliked. And I am going to try and select stuff that I will enjoy so that obviously skews my rating to be above 5/10.
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u/Human38562 3h ago
Because personally, I consider 5/10 to be neutral. Anything above I enjoyed,
Cool. Rating scales are arbitrary so you can apply any principle you like for your rating. None is more or less "flawed"
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u/poissonking 12h ago
The argument is in the assumptions. If someone is talking about movies, for example, there is an assumption that the quality of a movie can range from absolutely horrible to absolutely amazing with most movies falling in the ok range. That would correspond to a 5 on a 1-10 scale.
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u/-antipode 12h ago
Unfortunately that's also an assumption.
A scale only means what people agree to.
In academics, a 50, the median of a range, isnt considered okay. Its considered failing.
There is no authority like that for media.
In fact all we really have are mean, medians, and modes. So say the average (mean. Colloquially people refer to mean when they say average) score for a game is 7, (which of course no one know), then wouldn't that suggest a game that's a 7 isnt considered that noteworthy?
If we look at academics again, if the average score is 80, then that'd suggest anything above is considered better than the average and anything lower is worse than the average.
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u/JustHere4TheZipLines 12h ago
Averages aren’t always centered around the midpoint so it really depends on the distribution
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u/Material-Truth5457 12h ago
Median and average are often confused as they are the same for a normal distribution.
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u/Unfinished_user_na 12h ago
I'd also say, if we're talking about films or really any creative medium. The "average" or "mid" film that most people encounter, when taken in aggregate with all films made (not just those that receive major distribution and professional production. We're talking every indie film, every student film, every Neil Breen film, every attempt at a garage production, every self published conspiracy theory documentary on prime, every garbage micro budget slasher, every vertical micro drama, every long form YouTube project, even every porno that uses a thin plot to tie scenes together. Every honest attempt to create and publish a film or video project.) is probably closer to an 80% based solely on production value and the sheer volume of low quality films by amaetuers and low budget money grabs based on larger titles that they're up against.
I think it's safe to assume that the bottom 50% is more than covered by the terrible ameature projects that almost no one will ever seek out or see.
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12h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/kilawolf 12h ago
Or ask them if they think a 3/5 restaurant is above average. Idk why ppl focus on looks when there's like barely any scenarios where the midpoint of a rating system is considered average or decent.
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u/JollyRoger66689 12h ago
Don't 100% agree with this, depends if we are using a 1-10 scale or a 0-10
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12h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/JollyRoger66689 12h ago
I'm just saying if there are 4 numbers below a 5 and 5 numbers above it then a 5 is not necessarily "average".... although I suppose if we only consider something a 0 if it's something like a game that's literally unplayable it makes since for 5 to be average. Meh I take it back, 5 should be average
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u/Reasonable_Drink_789 10h ago
At this point 7/10 is dead average. Don’t have to like it, but that’s how it is.
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u/435rouhnj234_209u 12h ago
Blame the grading system. Kids are conditioned from a young age to think 90% = great, 85% = good, 80% = mid, 70% = bad.
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u/United-Ad5268 12h ago
Average of an equally weighted 1 to 10 system is 5.5.
The distribution of numbers is not necessarily evenly distributed and the mean can be skewed higher or lower. Additionally, a single value is a poor reflection of normal expectations, thus a range of values defined by a probability of being within normal expectations is a better representation.
This range could reasonably fall between in 5.5 and 7 and thus be defined as mid. Whereas your reasoning capacity regarding a rating system is demonstrably below average.
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u/swegga_sa 12h ago
I think this is a direct effect caused by how we treat different school grades 50% - 70% is ass to most people
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u/berke1904 12h ago
actually no, 5/10 is barely passing and under 5/10 is a failure but there is levels to a failure.
a 4/10 movie has a lot of problems at a lot of the basics from writing to visuals, a 1/10 movie is the most appalling thing you have seen or totally ruins a pre existing good thing.
6 is a little better be below average, 7 is average. 8 is good/above average, 9 is very good, 10 is the best.
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u/Downtown_Eye5736 12h ago
No, 70s is the mid. If you go look on metacritic, 70s rated games are the median and the mean. Below 50 and above 90 games are a rare exception. Vast majority are in the 60s-80s range.
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u/Objective_Praline482 12h ago
Ratings are on the scale of 10.
Average of ratings of all movies is somewhere between 6 and 7.
So mid or average would be around that value.
A grade of "F" isn't average, it's a fail.
"Mid" references not the yardstick but what's being measured.
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u/Nick_Fotiu_Is_God 12h ago
This is why farmers get nervous when I say I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.
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u/Routine-Sky-5529 12h ago
The problem is really everyone thinks they are above average or average is bad
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u/Bedquest 12h ago
Depends on the scale. If there is no zero option, then 5.5 is exactly mid.
And “average” is completely different verbiage. We say “above average” or “below average”. We dont say “above mid”.
So technically speaking, using wide ranges and not having a zero as a possibility, 1-3 is bad, 4-7 is mid, 8-10 is good. And you infer the level of midness or greatness based off of tone
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u/VikingVitalityFit 12h ago
You are mistaken by a mile on what mid means as well as what the 10 scale means.
"Mid" does not mean middle of bad to good, mid means it's middle good which goes from 6 to 10.
If a movie is a 5 it is a fail. 0-5 is just how bad of s failure it is
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u/newpsyaccount32 12h ago
personally i thought mid came from old midgrade weed ("mids") rather than a direct abbreviation of middle
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u/Original_Rich_2741 12h ago
I think part of it is a holdover from our A-F grading system. Everything below 60%/6 is falling, only a question of how much; 6 is a D, 7/10 is C, 8/10 is B, 9-10/10 is A.
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u/No_Trade_7315 12h ago
Mid is derived from the word middle but I would say it means something more like average. Importantly, an average is not a median. I would say, on average most movies are somewhere in the 6 to 8 range, so mid is 6-8; but I would never use the word “mid” I would just say average, because I think the word is dumb.
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u/CompetitiveLake3358 12h ago
I have seen people use it for everything from three out of 10 to 7 out of 10
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u/ThrowRAGlobeVase 12h ago
I think it depends on the specific thing you’re talking about and the distribution of ratings for that thing.
For example, if you’re talking about people, I’d say people generally think a 7/10 is attractive. I think that’s because the distribution of people really is centered around a 5, and when someone thinks 7, they think slightly better looking than average, but not drop dead gorgeous/handsome. You only need a few points above to talk about those people, especially because it a certain point it gets subjective; but you also need points below the 5 because there are ugly people out there.
The distribution for movies/content is different. The truth is we’re only exposed to good content on streaming and in theaters; and the algorithms only feed us good UGC online. Net net, the distribution of what we see IS already good, so people talk about a mid movie they saw online because it legitimately WAS a 7 out of 10 … it was enjoyable. And we all know there are tons of movies we’re not even exposed to that are absolute shit. But, from what we were exposed to, this was the midpoint in distribution.
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u/randomtuner 12h ago
5 is indifferent, not really enjoyed but not disliked either. So 7/10 may be mid, but it was still enjoyed
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u/EveryonesANurse 12h ago
7/10 movie is a good movie
Not middling
7/10 looks is good looking
Not middling
Average intelligence is bog standard 90-105 IQ
A quiz score of 7/10 is acceptable or
Not middling
A bog standard score on a quiz you haven't prepared for in any way is 5/10
Middling
When in class you are actively preparing for a test on that material
So when you score a 7/10 you're acceptable or "slightly above average"
More middling in that you've prepared and still don't do all that well
A 1/2 wrong answers test on something you've been preparing for is flat unacceptable/failure
Not middling
Context matters i suppose
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u/Thetinkeringtrader 11h ago
Honestly I think like lemme cook, and something being "fire", it's D-boy slang for something being not good. "U got that fire? nah just some mid."
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u/FreeFeez 10h ago
7/10 is average where I’m from. If you were a C 70% student you were average if you were 50% you were failing.
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u/-Foxer 10h ago
Unfortunately your ranch is not true. Mid can also stand for mid-range.
On a scale of 1 to 10 mid-range would be roughly 3-7, the rest being high range or low range. "mid" does not have to be a fixed point. it can refer to a range that's in the middle
So someone could claim something is mid, meaning it's in the middle range of shows, and still claim it was about a 7 out of 10 meaning it's high mid but still mid.
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u/Constant-Arugula-819 10h ago edited 10h ago
On a grading scale mid is an F. But saying someone got a C in a course is the definition of mid. So it makes sense mid means what it means.
For me games are only playable if they're a 9 or 10. Sleep is a 9/10 at worst. So games have to be really good for me to want to play them.
I'd wager most people don't play or quit playing games 5 or 6 and below. So ratings below certain numbers essentially become Fs. It doesn't makes any sense to score or argue something is a 2 vs a 3 unless you're a reviewer or like to put yourself through miserable experiences.
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u/Old_Competition3094 9h ago
Reminds me of European soccer ratings where a 5/10 is basically you could have been replaced by a toddler.
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u/Grandroots 9h ago
Mid take.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/mid
"mid
adjective
of mediocre or disappointing quality"
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u/Last-Shop-9829 9h ago
Middle and average ain't the same thing. You're confusing the mean and the median here. I would not say "mid" and average are synonymous
If 10 people watch a show, average could definitely be higher or lower than 5 as it gets skewed by extreme values so a 5/10 isn't always correct by each scenario
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u/RandyDefNOTArcher 9h ago
Couldnt agree more, mid feels like kind of a sleight, doesnt seem fair for that to apply to something that is 7/10.
Also, i think our ratings have been skewed over the past however many years since companies collecting feedback in the form of a rating out of 5 treat anything less than 5 as a failure/unsatisfactory.
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u/BringMeBurntBread 9h ago
Most people when they use the 1-10 rating scale, they’re going off of how it works in school.
At least in the American school system, a 90-100% grade is an A. 80-90% is a B. 70-80% is a C. 60-70% is a D. And anything from 60 and below is a failing grade or an F.
That’s why 7/10 is used to describe the average, because it translates to a C grade. A 5/10 is a 50%, which is a failing grade. It does not mean average.
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u/happyhippohats 8h ago
5/10 isn't the average score though, the average score would be the either the median or the average score given which is probably higher than that if only because 3/5 is probably the most common rating in a lot of publications and 1/5 the least common.
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u/New-Berry-3652 7h ago
5/10 is the average of the possible scores
7/10 is average compared to the other shows/movies
The main issue it that it doesn't make sense to lump in a statistic word like "average", with qualitative words like "bad", "good", or "great"
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u/ElegantAd2607 7h ago
Yesss!! I hate this. And I'm sick of people giving high ratings to things that suck. It's okay, give the million dollar movie a 2/10 it deserve it.
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u/Over_Sand7935 7h ago
Except your take on its origins is way off... And that's why you can't grasp it.
In fact you HotTake is Mid
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u/MeliodasTA 7h ago
I think that mid just does mean good but not great the way most people use it. Plus as others have said the out of 10 scale may as well be logarithmic; if something is only 5/10 that's seen as pretty bad even if it should be super average
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u/EventOk2270 7h ago
The problem is people are used to school grading where 50% or 5/10 is considered a fail. Labelling something 5/10 is basically saying that thing failed.
In reality an average movie should be 5/10. Then we can make better use of the 1-10 scale and differentiate between average and above average movies. An 8/10 movie is supposed to be excellent a 9/10 near perfect and 10/10 perfect. But now we don’t differentiate excellent with mid movies.
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u/El_Hombre_Fiero 6h ago
Most rating companies only rate between a 5/10 and 10/10, though. As such, a 7/10 has been normalized to mean average.
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u/AnyEverywhere8 5h ago
Well one could argue “mid” is relative in the sense it’s the middle of a distribution rather than the midpoint on an absolute scale.
For example, in school, there aren’t actually that many people scoring 0%-20% lol.
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u/Melodic-Sense9828 5h ago
I thought "mid" was more like "middling" not "middle." That might explain your confusion.
Here, in the South, we say "fair to middlin" when something is just "ok."
Middling- medium or average; neither very good nor very bad
According to Cambridge Dictionary.
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u/Blacklite_01 5h ago
7/10 for me is the difference between great and near perfect. So many movies are rated a 7 that i personally enjoy but don't really push any higher on the scale. But they're still way better than stuff that is just good.
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u/Radabard 5h ago
5/10 is an F. I don't rank what is better or worse trash, below a certain point it doesn't even matter.
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u/PurposeEmergency1320 13m ago
On a scale of 1/10 a 5/10 HAS to be “equally good and bad,” otherwise the scale makes no sense
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u/TinyNefariousness135 12h ago
Agreed! When I see “7/10” I see that as a GOOD experience. It’s like, the last thing you can rate it before a 6/10 which is like you said “above average”.
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u/SofaJockey 8h ago
Mid is a 7.3.
That's not an opinion, OpenCritic has 7.3 games at the 51st percentile of games, right in the middle.
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u/ForMeOnly93 12h ago
People are dumb as fuck, and they'll never use words correctly. It you keep on caring you'll just stay mad. It's sad, but just accept humans suck ass.
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u/Medical_Birthday2893 12h ago
Mid could mean 3-7 in the middle range or 4-6 however you want to chop it up
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u/inmortalErnie 11h ago
Nah bro you are wrong and here's why: A movie or a show are simply a story told trough moving images, so quality isn't part of the definition. So having said that, if I right know grab my phone and start recording and improvise the script in the go and like just leave it recording for a few minutes because I had to do something and then I go back and finish the story it's still a movie. Maybe I didn't put any effort at all, like maybe I didn't even record properly my face or you can barely hear the audio. That's still a movie! And of course If we are going to give it a score it should be a 0. That's the lowest of the low when it comes to movies by definition and there's a long way towards the shitty movies one can watch at the cinemas or tv, because even if they are really bad, knowing that it can be much worse (my previous example) is only fair to give it at least a 5 or 6, because even then some things can be decent, like at least your are able to understand what they are saying or see their faces or there's some sense to the story even if it's bad. So giving movies that are kinda good or mid a 7 is perfect. When using a scale the extremes (0 and 10) need to make sense.
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u/TheStrangeMonkey 11h ago
Ok, let me give yo the not refined version:
0-3 id bad
3-7 is mid
7-10 is good
Simple like that.
An other exemple to illustrate that: a person in its early 40s will be somewhere between 40 and 43, in its mid 40 the person will be between 43 and 47, snd, finally in its late forty it will be somewhere between 47 and the day before hitting 50.
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u/Thin-Instruction783 9h ago edited 4h ago
1/10 through 5/10 is bad
6/10 is mid or okay
7/10 is good
8/10 through 10/10 is great or incredible
Edit: Fuck you
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u/DNxHD36 13h ago
That's just not how people use the 10/10 scale. People treat it more like grades in school, whereby a 70% absolutely is average, and anything under 50% is a fail.
This is why I prefer the five-star scale. I think it encourages a wider range of rating.