I legitimately can't tell if you are being intentionally obtuse at this point.
Here is a quote of yours
"Note that I also didn't bag on GoW winning this year's Era GotY which was voted on by enthusiasts and fans, not professional critics!"
The implication is that you can't be mad at us for getting it wrong because we're just enthusiasts. And what are you exactly? A professional?
No, that's not the implication. Are you trolling me? I'm assuming that you are here because this is a frankly absurd response to what I posted.
The implication is that critics have a duty to be more incisive in their criticism (for example, incisive about the shitty tropes that GoW uses) than fans. Fans can't "get it wrong" because there is nothing to get wrong! ERA's GotY is a clear snapshot of what the site likes, and that's all. If you go through the votes, some of them have elaborate, thoughtful criticism attached to their picks; other votes have one line for one game and then no lines for anything else in order to do the bare minimum of criticism, and both of those (and every level of critique in between) are valid! We're aggregating what the site liked, and we're not doing it for pay or under the brand of "critic."
In fact, critics can't "get it wrong" either, but they should do a hell of a job of defending their choices for GotY. However, when so few critics have the sense of responsibility to do what, say, Abby over at Giant Bomb did and at least attempt to address the roles that women play in GoW's narrative, yeah, I have no problem critiquing the critics for being less than thorough in their criticism.
RDR2, for example, was very well-critiqued across the board. Something like AC: Odyssey also was really thoughtfully critiqued more than most of the past AC games were (but AC seems to be well-critiqued in general because of its appeal to multiple gender identities and cultures, though that's a whole 'nother post).
GoW, across the board, did not get that scrutiny, and yeah, I read and heard the bulk of the criticism for it. Then, it wins GotY. Other than being a game that I personally find to be shit (and I will talk about how shitty I think it is if prompted), I'm super-irritated that it, regardless of how I felt about it, didn't get the critique that other AAA games got. It has legit problems that I think needed to at least be more thoroughly addressed by the critics before they vomited up awards all over it.
Nowhere did I say or even imply that I'm the most professional of critics and I'm more right than anyone else. I went so far as to
explicitly say that I'm also a fucking fan and therefore, my critique is (or should be) less valuable than that of the professional critics' critique. In fact, I said that I view things through the lens of a fan all the time. Please stop lying about what I'm saying; it's a juvenile and lame tactic. If you want to discuss this, fine, but if you're just going to bullshit and troll to bullshit and troll, please stop with the responses. They're pointless.