Starvation, or How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Trolls
As you can see from the title, this is all fueled by the troll movement that’s afoot. Of course, I can only mean the Reddit post that went up Sunday telling all true Ghostbusters fans to go and dislike any and all positive reviews of the all-female Ghostbusters remake which premiers tonight for public showings. Not just dislike the reviews, call the reviewer every name in the book and tell everyone else that they’re paid off by Sony, no less. Now of course any sensible person out there would see this and just laugh and laugh, but we’re not dealing with sense here. No no, we’re dealing in the ugliest that the Internet has to offer, the insensitive, don’t give a crap, basement living, jobless slobs who refuse to yield when it comes to hating a movie, TV show, or other content.
Of course, my own feelings on the Ghostbusters remake is irrelevant, but if it’s any sympathy for those looking forward to the film, I’m with you. I actually didn’t mind the first trailer, you know, the one that has the most dislikes on YouTube. Didn’t mind it, not saying I liked it or anything. Everything else I’ve seen, however, doesn’t boost my confidence. While I wasn’t too excited for Spy (2015) just by the trailers, it turned out to be one of the better movies of last year. So by that model, Ghostbusters should at least be decent, and the early reviews suggest as such. So back to this troll movement to shoot down all positive reviews, all I can do is be sensible about this: laugh at it and move on. So I’ll look back at my favorite troll movements of recent years.
Make The Dark Knight (2008) #1 on IMDB
At the time, The Godfather (1972) was the #1 rated film on IMDB, and with the unanimous praising of Christopher Nolan’s newest film, the fans and trolls just couldn’t settle for it being second to any other film, so the idea was set up this way: rate Dark Knight a 10/10 and Godfather 1/10. Now of course there are a few people out there who may actually feel that way and critique the films similarly, but for the majority of voters it was troll glory. IMDB realized this and discounted most reviews before anything further could happen. At the moment, Dark Knight is #4 and Godfather stands #2.
Boycott Episode VII
Perhaps the most disliked troll movements that get traction are racially fueled, and last fall, on the eve of the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), a movement was started by supposed white-supremacists who didn’t like that John Boyega was a lead actor heavily featured in the trailers. Hmm, where were these supremacists when the hundreds of other black-led films came around? As it turned out of course, the film’s lead was Rey, and Boyega’s character, Finn, was a key supporting character. While some may not have been huge fans of Boyega or his previous works, once again the majority of supporters of Boycott Episode VII were trolls. Luckily it was short-lived and those who were truly behind the movement were rightfully criticized and, you know, called racists and everything. The Internet is a nice place.
Marvel Pays Critics
Of course nothing helps a troll movement more than a highly anticipated film with highly liked advertisements becoming one of the worst reviewed films of the year, and that’s exactly what happened this spring when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hit the screen. Of course a similar movement was started in 2013 when DC fans were upset that Man of Steel (2013) was rated lower than 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. Of course, the answer was obvious: Marvel and Disney were paying off the critics to bash everything DC and praise everything Marvel. That is the only explanation for why a film that some fans hated, Iron Man 3 (2013) was higher rated than Man of Steel. Hmm, well what about when one of the senior editors of Rotten Tomatoes tweeted out that she didn’t like the rating any better than the fans? If a payoff of that size was going on, wouldn’t the senior editor of the main site for critics who rates films herself also fall in line? Surprisingly this wasn’t enough for fans, so when similar events happened with the release of Batman v Superman once again poor critical reviews were explained with cold, hard cash. Even some respectable online contributors were on-board with the idea of critics and film pundits being paid by Disney to enjoy every Disney and Marvel properties. How meaningless the word “professional” has become in that field. Anyways, I’m sure there are some brain-dead goons out there who still believe this, but in almost every case I’d like to believe the better word to use is troll.
So now here comes the million dollar question: how do we stop troll movements?
Well, the answer is, you don’t. You can’t. You won’t. Ever. No matter how much complaining, retorting, and dispelling any individual can do, there is always going to be someone out there who just wants to irritate and go trolling because they have nothing in their lives otherwise to amuse them. So one thing that I can suggest, something I can recommend: ignore it. Yeah, just laugh them offstage and go about the rest of your day. You know the phrase, “Don’t feed the trolls”? That just about perfectly sums up what I do; I starve them. All I can do is laugh at the amount of people who buy into any idea that one maniac can shape their minds about how they feel. However, I understand how the troll movements are going to keep going. Our society has shifted from having our own opinions and backing them up to immediately judging others for not having the same opinions and alienating others. Plus with the advent of Twitter, Facebook, and the other social media platforms, blogging included, it’s now faster than ever that we can get opinions, emotions, and feelings on any topic, and most of the time we don’t even think about what the looks like or how we look for saying what we say. It makes sense that twitter movements get the energy that they do. Especially in the recent events going on in Dallas and Minneapolis. Anymore we hear the early news, we figure out an opinion, and we stick with it and deny anything that goes against it. There are times where that is actually appropriate, of course, like the loss of a loved one, a tragedy, or a major shock to the system, and in these times we’re not at our best. Sure, I’ve been there. There are other times when we do this in inappropriate times, and for the most part this is where trolls are the best example, and those who buy into concepts and movements created by trolls.
Anyways we’ve dived into several different angles on this, but my bottom line is this: if you’re bothered by the occasional troll movement, the more you mention it and pass it along, the stronger it becomes. If you just let it pass, it will be over before you know it. Sure, I’ve broken that by mentioning the troll movements we have in the past and the one that we’re currently hip-deep in, but hey, every rule has an exception. Consider this mine.
