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By David Futrelle
The movie review-aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes has made some changes to its website that will prevent angry trolls from talking shit about movies none of them have seen, removing the ability of anyone but professional critics to review movies that aren’t out yet and shutting a feature that allowed users to report whether or not they want to see a movie that’s about to come out.
It was clearly a response to an organized downvoting campaign against Marvel and Disney’s upcoming Captain Marvel movie, which has angered the internet’s angriest men because it features a woman — Brie Larson — in the titular role. Trolls had apparently managed to push the film’s “want to see” rating down to 27% before the feature was disabled.
As Collider points out, this is hardly the first time angry dudes have tried to tank a movie at the box office with mass downvotes.
Over the last couple of years, it’s become commonplace for “fans” who have yet to see a movie to enact a negging campaign designed to bring down the film’s audience scores prior to release. The Ghostbusters “fans” did this by downvoting the trailer for Paul Feige’s female-led reboot [and] Marvel Studios “fans” intentionally tried to tank the Rotten Tomatoes score of Black Panther … .
Naturally, the trolls are pissed, and many have taken to Twitter to denounce Rotten Tomatoes for allegedly taking away the First Amendment rights of ordinary, hard-working Americans by preventing them from crapping on a movie they haven’t seen on one privately-owned website:
Indeed, the critics charge, the Rotten Tomatoites are apparently destroying democracy itself.
But what else would one expect from the gang of beta cuck feminazi fascist assholes who run Rotten Tomatoes?
According to this self-described Jordan Peterson fan, the “fucking fascist dictators” at Rotten Tomatoes have taken away his right to tell the world that he wants to see a different movie, although he has in fact told the world this in the very tweet in question:
The powers that be at Rotten Tomatoes are apparently a rather unique breed of Nazis in that they are also liberals:
They are also, apparently, fascists who hate white men. (Which would be sort of a new twist for fascism, I have to say.)
This fellow, with a Covington Kid avatar and zero followers, is also very much concerned about the rights of white men:
As is this fellow with nine followers:
And this lovely fellow with five followers and an Elon Musk avatar:
Evidently Rotten Tomatoes is not only racist against whites but also racist against everyone who isn’t white:
The brave free speech defenders made sure that their own personal free speech was filled with all the right angry internet dude buzzwords:
Other commenters leaned heavily on the slurs:
Some even made up their own slur just for the occasion, combining the name of the actress playing Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) with the old favorite “retard.”
Some of the criticism got weirdly specific. For example, these critics are angry that the people running Rotten Tomatoes are evidently too enthusiastic about performing oral sex:
As a result of Rotten Tomatoes’ actions, at least two white MALE asses will not be attending the movie.
This white man, thinking ahead, apparently plans to boycott a completely different Marvel movie coming out later this year:
Meanwhile, the same people who insisted they didn’t organize the mass-downvoting of Captain Marvel have evidently decided to organize a mass-upvoting of the movie Alita: Battle Angel — I guess to prove that angry manbabies don’t hate all superhero movies centered around women, at least not if the women in question have weird huge cgi-ed anime eyes.
So far these newly minted Alita superfans have pushed the Rotten Tomatoes audience score rating for that film up to 94% — a considerable improvement from the 59% score from critics.
So sad that these thoughtful critics and their assorted sockpuppets have been denied their sacred right to voice their opinions about a movie none of them have ever seen, at least on one particular site out of the gazillions of sites on the internet that would like its audience rating scores to actually reflect the views of the audience and not of angry mobs of woman-with-normal-eyes-hating trolls. I can only hope that free speech somehow manages to survive this assault.
@ Lukas Xavier, quoting Contract Jack:
Does anyone else read this guy’s words in a sort of over-the-top, comic book supervillain voice? It’s fun to read them in the voice of Megamind!
Also, not sure his replies make us “fortunate”. He seems very, very anxious to convince us of his coolness and busy, important life; I’m not really buying it, though. Smacks of desperation.
@Ichthyic
“Free speech” has always been meant only for the powerful, and to override the speech and basic freedoms and rights of the weak and disadvantaged.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. The whole idea is flawed, yet it’s worshipped as an unquestionable, holy, objective natural law upon which all morality and the existence of the world itself depends!!!111!1
In reality, words are the most powerful tools and/or weapons, but if words were controlled based on the harm they are capable of causing (and ARE causing) the world would, admittedly, collapse, because it’s an evil man’s world.
I got an amazing deal on our first cat fountain at Petco because the manufacturer changed their packaging. My cats love it and only occasionally stick their paws in it. It’s a Pioneer brand and not too bad to clean and replace the filter.
I got a second one (another Pioneer) a couple of months ago on Amazon; 39.99 and it came with a cleaning brush and a package of replacement filters. This one’s even easier to take apart and clean.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to get replacement filters at either Petco or Petsmart and I have to order them from Amazon. I was looking at the reviews last week and a guy detailed a method for reusing them by taking one apart, washing the felt bits, and replacing the charcoal in it with food-grade charcoal from cheap supplements. Gonna try it for sure.
ETA – I think the Blockquote Mammoth is getting a bit paranoid about all the comment timer talk; This comment showed up immediately. They don’t always show up right away for me, either, but generally do after a few minutes.
@Hambeast
Ooh, nice tip. I might have to try that just because I dont like all the wasted plastic. Mine is also pioneer and I order the replacement filters on chewy.com, which is one of the few places I can get the hypoallergenic food my kitty needs.
@Contract Jack: This is real simple. Even if you think private businesses have a duty to provide you space on their dime, and they don’t, the Rotten Tomatoes brigading is still wrong. Not only does it violate EULAs (funny how all of you guys pose as being free marketeers until it inconveniences you then suddenly fuck contracts and terms of service – do you get mad at “No Shoes No Shirt No Service too?”), but it also undermines Rotten Tomato’s point. I’m going to bet that you’re irrational so this won’t change your mind, but in the hope I’m wrong, I’ll risk feeding the trolls precisely once with this analogy, which I will then laboriously spell out.
Imagine someone somewhere is willing to run an infinite length magazine. They will take open submissions from anyone. But! They still want the magazine to be about, say, men’s health. Only articles on that topic will be posted. Even if the articles are grammatically incorrect, or contain scientific errors, they’ll be posted. As long as there isn’t literally child porn or overtly illegal behavior, they’ll happily publish your content.
Then some brigading idiots decide to write millions of (eerily similar articles) against Black Panther’s Oscar nom. They don’t even try to pretend that it’s about men’s health.
Are they being censored when that publisher says “That’s not what this magazine is about, go somewhere else?”
Rotten Tomatoes is that publisher. They are a publisher that allows anyone to publish a movie review in addition to aggregating reviewers published in other outlets to create a cumulative score. But you can’t use Rotten Tomatoes as a classified ad service, or a dating site.
What Rotten Tomatoes decided to do is to say that they have an editorial standard: you don’t get to express any kind of review or opinion on their site, contaminating their data (so it’s like an infinitely long men’s health magazine that also tracked terms and was surprised to see “Black Panther” trending), unless they have a reasonable expectation that you actually saw the movie. Like, say, it needs to be physically possible to see the movie, because it’s actually completely edited and available even to reviewers.
That’s not fucking censorship. Entitled prats need to realize that, just because they’ve gotten used to crappy moderation, the world doesn’t owe them an infinite number of sounding-off boards for their shitty opinions. I’m a freelance writer. Anyone who actually writes professionally can tell you that it is hard as shit to get attention, get published, and have discerning people read your stuff and decide to give it their imprimatur. I’m not being censored when an article I submit to a magazine is rejected. It’s editorial discretion. Grow up.
Good Job RT! Finally the censors get censored! I tried to vote most of the day Thursday! There were technical difficulties! Why is it that at least 30% of the positive vote is dropped due to folks hijacking IP addresses? Oh, I forgot: Males must have their freedom of speech!
Well now to my disappointment but not to my surprise I see a great deal of passive-aggressive liberal sarcasm but not a single genuine argument nor answer to my simple question. You have all failed badly and you should seriously consider remedial Logic and Rhetoric courses or failing that a basic acquaintance with the FACTS.
However to spare all of you further embarrassment I am now declaring the Mercy Rule is in effect in this thread, and I will no further humiliate you with my posts and my simply yet strangely unanswerable questions. You may be able to find me in other threads if time allows. Lots of love 😉 😉 😉 😉
@contract JACK
You are strangest little person I’ve seen on these blog in a long time.
What would a “genuine argument” looknlike to you? Mayhaps something that almost entirely agrees with you? Because I see plenty of valid arguments against you, and you have yet to even demonstrate your premise is factual.
Contract Jack is the best troll we’ve had in a while, at least since seagull boy. How cute that he thinks he has humiliated anyone.
@Mabret
Well, he’s certainly humiliated himself.
Mabret,
I’m fairly sure that Jack actually is Seagull Boy/MRAL. His posts on the tindercaust thread are giving off that whiff.
Wow, dude, I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I say we are all soooooo appreciative of your mercy and reluctance to humiliate us… /s
Or in other words: ????
Contract JACK, calling something “not an argument” doesn’t make it so.