There are other things at play here. It is important to understand that the average human is unbelievably limited and delicate (in the modern era, they don't understand any of the systems that sustain their lifestyle and have skills of only marginal use). There are multiple systems in place to take all these delicate humans and set them up to live comfortable lives.

The first layer is the makers, but after that there are a couple of layers of assessors and distributors before ideas and products hit the masses. For someone in a community that makes things, criticism isn't so useful. In the other layers that are there to work out what ordinary people should do armchair criticism is a lot more useful. Still not very impressive, but more useful.

The armchair critics aren't at all interested in making things. Their self-appointed role isn't to make things. They are part of a community that generates chatter to help guide the conversation of the people who actually decide what should happen at the mass-market level.