strange headache
Banned
In his own words, famous movie critic Roger Ebert was often accused of "being too lenient" in his reviews. He attributed this to his rating system and simply liking movies too much:
When you take a statistical look at his reviews, you can see that Ebert wasn't all that lenient on most movies. He considered a 2.5 star rating as a "thumbs down, would not recommend". When looking at a histogram of his reviews, we see a left or negatively skewed distribution. Also he has given out almost twice as much 3 star ratings than any other and on the left side, we see very few movies that have the terrible rating between 0 and 1.
By today's standards, Ebert would be considered an "outrage farmer", somebody who strived on negative reviews as he trashed a lot of movies. Yet, at the time he was considered by his peers as being too soft with his criticism. Maybe this is indicative of a time when media the media landscape was still fragmented and many outlets way more independent than nowadays.
Concentration of media ownership is on the rise as many media industries are already highly concentrated and dominated by a very small number of firms. With movie production belonging to a a few corporate juggernauts who happen to also consolidate most of the offline and online news outlets today, we certainly witness the rise of access media that exists solely to dish out hidden advertisement and defend the financial interests of conglomerate they belong to. As such, many online sources exists solely to create fluff pieces in order to puff up the release of upcoming products. Disney for example owns the ABC network, do you truly expect a negative Disney movie review from these outlets?
Access media has a vested interest in creating false narratives in order to protect the public perception of the products they seek to defend. We all know the story behind Ghostbusters 2016 and the media narrative that simply equated any criticism with misogynism, like this article for example. Everyone's favorite Nintendo critic, who ironically made his name by exclusively reviewing bad retro games, suffered the brunt of this attack. Even the frikkin' NYT wrote an article on AVGN's refusal to... just go see a movie. In what times do we live when you get branded with a scarlet letter for simply not wanting to consume something?
Nowadays movies need to be prepped up as "world changing" events, when in reality they are just vapid entertainment. Everything need to be a first, the first Asian superhero, the first black disabled trans protagonist, the first minority starship captain. It's annoying the crap out of me, when there are so many more pressing real world issues out there.
A few months ago, a youtuber called Jay Exci released a scathing 5 hour long review of Dr Who. It's a long video, but very well articulated and meticulously taking apart each and every problem with the new series. It didn't take long and he was branded by representative of the mainstream media as an online troll, an outrage farmer and a hate-monger for merely lamenting the sharp decline in quality of one of his favorite shows. Is it mere bitterness, outrage farming or an intrinsic love for the show that motivated Jay Exci to pour so much work into his review? You tell me:
On the other hand, we all suffer from negativity bias. The negative bias is our tendency not only to register negative stimuli more readily but also to dwell on these events. As such the case can be made that negative content has a higher appeal to general audiences and therefore produces more views. And let's be honest, who hasn't enjoyed a scathing review of an entertainment products that he found to be lacking? Certainly there are outrage-mongers who strive on this negativity bias and exclusively produce negative buzz in order to generate revenue exist.
That being said, the fact that these content producers become so popular cannot be explained by negativity bias alone. I'd say their criticism resonates with a lot of people, that is also why they grow so large, much to the dismay of the corporate shills. Is it not the case that amidst a sea of mediocre entertainment content, only a few excellent examples really stand out? Simply dismissing any criticism as 'outrage farming' is reductive and reeks of corporate damage mitigation. I prefer to intimately like a select few things, than to be superficially hyped for everything.
So herein lies the rub. How do we differentiate between outrage performance, fluff pieces and valid criticism? Not every negative review and not every harsh criticism can simply be dismissed as trolling, bitterness or clickbait. Not every positive review is honest either. Sometimes, criticism is necessary to protect the things we love, like in Jay Exci's example. He wasn't looking for outrage, he just wanted his beloved show to remain excellent.
As for me personally, I'd rather watch a critical piece even of something that I love, than having to suffer another corporate fluff piece. This sugary "everything is great, everything is fantastic" attitude that merely serves as hidden advertisement in order to sell you crap is sapping the life out of me. In the end, all this media hype, all these tweets and articles about Snyder's new Zombie flick didn't make it a good movie. I'm not some Pavlovian dog that can be conditioned into liking something and I certainly don't need to be guilt tripped into consumerism.
When you take a statistical look at his reviews, you can see that Ebert wasn't all that lenient on most movies. He considered a 2.5 star rating as a "thumbs down, would not recommend". When looking at a histogram of his reviews, we see a left or negatively skewed distribution. Also he has given out almost twice as much 3 star ratings than any other and on the left side, we see very few movies that have the terrible rating between 0 and 1.
By today's standards, Ebert would be considered an "outrage farmer", somebody who strived on negative reviews as he trashed a lot of movies. Yet, at the time he was considered by his peers as being too soft with his criticism. Maybe this is indicative of a time when media the media landscape was still fragmented and many outlets way more independent than nowadays.
Concentration of media ownership is on the rise as many media industries are already highly concentrated and dominated by a very small number of firms. With movie production belonging to a a few corporate juggernauts who happen to also consolidate most of the offline and online news outlets today, we certainly witness the rise of access media that exists solely to dish out hidden advertisement and defend the financial interests of conglomerate they belong to. As such, many online sources exists solely to create fluff pieces in order to puff up the release of upcoming products. Disney for example owns the ABC network, do you truly expect a negative Disney movie review from these outlets?
Access media has a vested interest in creating false narratives in order to protect the public perception of the products they seek to defend. We all know the story behind Ghostbusters 2016 and the media narrative that simply equated any criticism with misogynism, like this article for example. Everyone's favorite Nintendo critic, who ironically made his name by exclusively reviewing bad retro games, suffered the brunt of this attack. Even the frikkin' NYT wrote an article on AVGN's refusal to... just go see a movie. In what times do we live when you get branded with a scarlet letter for simply not wanting to consume something?
Nowadays movies need to be prepped up as "world changing" events, when in reality they are just vapid entertainment. Everything need to be a first, the first Asian superhero, the first black disabled trans protagonist, the first minority starship captain. It's annoying the crap out of me, when there are so many more pressing real world issues out there.
A few months ago, a youtuber called Jay Exci released a scathing 5 hour long review of Dr Who. It's a long video, but very well articulated and meticulously taking apart each and every problem with the new series. It didn't take long and he was branded by representative of the mainstream media as an online troll, an outrage farmer and a hate-monger for merely lamenting the sharp decline in quality of one of his favorite shows. Is it mere bitterness, outrage farming or an intrinsic love for the show that motivated Jay Exci to pour so much work into his review? You tell me:
On the other hand, we all suffer from negativity bias. The negative bias is our tendency not only to register negative stimuli more readily but also to dwell on these events. As such the case can be made that negative content has a higher appeal to general audiences and therefore produces more views. And let's be honest, who hasn't enjoyed a scathing review of an entertainment products that he found to be lacking? Certainly there are outrage-mongers who strive on this negativity bias and exclusively produce negative buzz in order to generate revenue exist.
That being said, the fact that these content producers become so popular cannot be explained by negativity bias alone. I'd say their criticism resonates with a lot of people, that is also why they grow so large, much to the dismay of the corporate shills. Is it not the case that amidst a sea of mediocre entertainment content, only a few excellent examples really stand out? Simply dismissing any criticism as 'outrage farming' is reductive and reeks of corporate damage mitigation. I prefer to intimately like a select few things, than to be superficially hyped for everything.
So herein lies the rub. How do we differentiate between outrage performance, fluff pieces and valid criticism? Not every negative review and not every harsh criticism can simply be dismissed as trolling, bitterness or clickbait. Not every positive review is honest either. Sometimes, criticism is necessary to protect the things we love, like in Jay Exci's example. He wasn't looking for outrage, he just wanted his beloved show to remain excellent.
As for me personally, I'd rather watch a critical piece even of something that I love, than having to suffer another corporate fluff piece. This sugary "everything is great, everything is fantastic" attitude that merely serves as hidden advertisement in order to sell you crap is sapping the life out of me. In the end, all this media hype, all these tweets and articles about Snyder's new Zombie flick didn't make it a good movie. I'm not some Pavlovian dog that can be conditioned into liking something and I certainly don't need to be guilt tripped into consumerism.
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