While everyone was busy bashing the fanboys of The Dark Knight Rises for posting negative and rather insulting comments on negative reviews of the movie, a lot of things went quietly unnoticed.
1. How bad the comments actully were - Nobody knows. Partially because some of the "extreme" comments have reportedly been deleted by the moderators but more importantly because I don't think anybody cared to go through the entire thread - not even the people who wrote long articles bashing TDKR fans. I am saying so because I can point to hundred other threads on all public forums (including RT) having comments 100 times more sexist, racist and threatening to the original posters or other commenters. And funnily enough nobody cares. I agree that I didn't get to see the comments that were deleted but the same is true for people writing articles on it too.
2. Who benefitted from this - Rotten Tomatoes, who else? Short term benefit - increased web-site traffic. Long term benefit - better branding and PR for the company for sending out a strong message
3. Who lost - Nobody except Eric Snider maybe. Even though he was trying to prove the same point the chief editor of Rotten Tomatoes was. Maybe his method was somewhat unethical. But in my opinion the main reason he was banned from RT was diverting traffic away from the site.
So what's the alternative? Well, do the same thing that you do with anything that doesn't function properly - fix it. The editor of RT has himself talked about a few options in that regard. Try them out. Even 8 year old kids try to fix their broken toys first before whining to their parents about it. If people at Rotten Tomatoes thought such things don't/won't happen in public forums, they were living in a fools paradise to say the least. And if the chief editor really thought asking people not to be a dick was the solution, maybe he should have tried telling Bin Laden that a long time ago. Would have saved us a lot of time and resources.
PS: I don't agree/disagree with the negative reviews as i haven't seen the movie yet and I hate internet trolls as much as anyone else does but again that's besides the point.
1. How bad the comments actully were - Nobody knows. Partially because some of the "extreme" comments have reportedly been deleted by the moderators but more importantly because I don't think anybody cared to go through the entire thread - not even the people who wrote long articles bashing TDKR fans. I am saying so because I can point to hundred other threads on all public forums (including RT) having comments 100 times more sexist, racist and threatening to the original posters or other commenters. And funnily enough nobody cares. I agree that I didn't get to see the comments that were deleted but the same is true for people writing articles on it too.
2. Who benefitted from this - Rotten Tomatoes, who else? Short term benefit - increased web-site traffic. Long term benefit - better branding and PR for the company for sending out a strong message
3. Who lost - Nobody except Eric Snider maybe. Even though he was trying to prove the same point the chief editor of Rotten Tomatoes was. Maybe his method was somewhat unethical. But in my opinion the main reason he was banned from RT was diverting traffic away from the site.
So what's the alternative? Well, do the same thing that you do with anything that doesn't function properly - fix it. The editor of RT has himself talked about a few options in that regard. Try them out. Even 8 year old kids try to fix their broken toys first before whining to their parents about it. If people at Rotten Tomatoes thought such things don't/won't happen in public forums, they were living in a fools paradise to say the least. And if the chief editor really thought asking people not to be a dick was the solution, maybe he should have tried telling Bin Laden that a long time ago. Would have saved us a lot of time and resources.
PS: I don't agree/disagree with the negative reviews as i haven't seen the movie yet and I hate internet trolls as much as anyone else does but again that's besides the point.
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