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IGN | Rotten Tomatoes Under Fire After PR Firm's Scheme to Pay Critics for Positive Reviews Uncovered

⁨489⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨TheSparrowPrince@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨moviesandtv@lemmy.film⁩

https://www.ign.com/articles/rotten-tomatoes-under-fire-after-pr-firms-scheme-to-pay-critics-for-positive-reviews-uncovered

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Comments

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  • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    And another site is enveloped by shitifacation.

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    • cmbabul@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Remember IMDB in the early 00s? It was you needed from what it set out to be. I recently went back to grab some lists for automation and holy shit it’s a wasteland of bullshit. I can’t imagine getting lost in it for hours learning about movies and deciding what I wanted to watch next if it was what it has become

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      • KillAllPoorPeople@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I really loved IMDb back in the day. While the user ratings weren’t perfect, there used to be a formula you could use to figure out the worthiness of a movie to watch. Now (10 years or so), IMDb user ratings are inundated with conservatives and older generations who tend to rate based on their fragile feelings rather than on how watchable a movie is.

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      • Someonedifferent@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I miss the IMDb message boards so much. It was so neat to be able to ask a question about a movie or read a post someone made three years before explaining the ending.

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      • echoplex21@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Letterboxd has been slowly filling that void for me

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    • nevernevermore@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      shitifacation

      The term is enshittification, penned by Cory Doctorow

      Shitifacation was my last international holiday where the airline lost my luggage

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      • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Oof. THAT must have royally sucked

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    • funktion@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      RT was shit from the start though.

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      • downpunxx@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        not from the start, it wasn't no. after they sold out, it became a corrupted willing tool of the studios. i made the move to metacritic 10 years ago.

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  • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    IGN making this article is wild. I’m not accusing them of accepting literal money but come on lmao.

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    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      IGN: “Fifty dollars?! Have some fucking dignity. Our good reviews cost at least $200k”

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    • tea@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It takes a thief to catch a thief

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    • Lazylazycat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yeah didn’t they give the latest Battlefield 9/10 on release? 😂

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    • Sniatch@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I was thinking the same lol

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    • panchzila@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Aren’t they owned by the same company?

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  • HellAwaits@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The MCU having as many good scores as it does is the biggest giveaway that RT is influenced by money or connections. Like there’s no way in hell the MCU has THAT many good movies when most of them are boring AF.

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    • Hiccup@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Not really. Up until recently, most of the MCU was good to great. I’m not exactly sure where the shift happened, but a lot of the more recent ones have been trash. I’m talking about the secret invasions and black widows, where they’ve completely lost the script.

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      • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        After End Game was that shift. It felt like they told all there was to tell, and the stakes were gone.

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      • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The peak is at whatever point you realized you had seen the same movie before.

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      • ArghZombies@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Which is why RT scores were usually good. Because a RT percentage is just the percentage of critics that thought the film was good or better.

        Too many people treat RT scores as a single “this is a film that has a quality rating of 90%” whereas it’s “90% of critics think it’s not shit”.

        Really, this is RTs fault for picking a metric so often used in a different way.

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    • money_loo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yeah everyone knows if something is popular it sucks.

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  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The best part - Rotten Tomatoes can be manipulated by paying several people $50. Five Hamiltons.

    I know reviewing movies doesn’t pay well, but I didn’t know it was that bad.

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    • jordanlund@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      How many $50 reviewers did they have to buy though?

      Looking at Ophelia… huh, it’s not on Rotten Tomatoes anymore…

      Well, looking at ANOTHER crappy Daisy Ridley movie, Chaos Walking:

      www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chaos_walking

      21% rating on 154 reviews.

      So 32 positive reviews and 122 negative reviews.

      To hit 60% they would need to add 151 positive reviews. 183/305 total reviews.

      At $50 a pop, those 151 positive reviews would run $7,550. Chump change.

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    • psycho_driver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If you really want to get depressed research how much representatives and senators have been bought off with in the recent past.

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  • Four_lights77@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The user reviews are where it’s at on rotten tomatoes. The critic reviews have been kinda suspect for a while.

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    • neonspool@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      the critic reviews have always been complete dogshit. too many movies get 100% or 0% on rotten tomatoes.

      if i’m not mistaken IMDB ratings are only user based, and in my opinion, i almost never disagree with IMDB ratings and i think it’s because it has a vastly larger voting group to get a more accurate viewer consensus even if a small number of critics give a 0/10 or 10/10

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  • Endorkend@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Who would've thought that this was happening on a site with often massive disparities between Critic and Public reviews, almost always related to content with big marketing budgets.

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  • betwixthewires@lemmy.basedcount.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Good god has the world not figured this out already? Or was it a conspiracy theory until now?

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  • zcd@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yeah no shit, RT end IMDb have been review shills for years, completely worthless

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    • metallic_substance@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Anybody got good suggestions for alternatives?

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      • dlpkl@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The issue is that every site uses the same critics to aggregate scores from. That being said I like using metacritic since you can view it by audience rating, and excluding the anti-woke, incel brigades on some media it usually aligns pretty well with what score I’d personally give a movie.

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      • artsii@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Check out Letterboxd. But the star rating system is used a bit differently than you might be used to, like an average move will get a 3/5 stars, and that’s not a “bad” score. Just took me a bit getting used to

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      • trachemys@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Forget aggregators. Find a couple critics you usually agree with. People have different tastes.

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  • spittingimage@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Uncovered? I thought it was public knowledge for years.

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  • AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I always just assumed that the badly rated ones might be legit but that the higher ones may have had a few bought off critics (because capitalism) here and there, but now I know I’m right.

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  • psycho_driver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Anybody who hasn’t noticed the change in recent years hasn’t been paying attention.

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  • Naatan@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Movie / TV reviews are such a shit show. I rarely find myself agreeing with the averaged out rating.

    These days I’ll just make sure the rating is above say 30 and beyond that I’ll rely on trailers and reading actual reviews. But finding new movies and tv shows to watch is quite a chore as a result.

    I hope someday soon AI can be employed to give you real personalized recommendations that don’t suck. But realistically it’ll just be more shitty algorithms meant to serve the interests of the highest bidder.

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    • someguy3@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      This is why I liked rotten tomatoes, it separates the critics scores from the audience scores.

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      • Naatan@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Yeah I definitely assign more value to the audience reviews. Critics are mostly useless, unless you identify ones that align with your personal taste.

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  • detun3d@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Oh, people still pay attention to review scores? 🤣

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  • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    So what if they do? It’s anybody’s right to conduct a free transaction. If somebody wants to hire me to write a lovely review, why not? If I want to hire people to write some bad reviews about my competition, that’s a free transaction. Crazy communists want to exert big government control over the free review market.

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    • Deftdrummer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s called integrity and readers have faith in the writer. When it’s discovered you’re full of shit there’s zero service to anyone.

      Your letting your lemmygrad bullshit seep into this community.

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      • abbotsbury@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        This person is the opposite of a lemmygrad loony

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      • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Integrity means if you take money from somebody you do your best to write an excellent review. Also, be equal and fair, charge the same price to write a good review for Oppenheimer as you do to write a good review for Barbie. Take pride in your work and write good compelling reviews, people will pay you what you are worth.

        I’ve never even been to Leningrad, I only know it from the Billy Joel tune.

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    • Commiunism@lemmy.wtf ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Nice bait Mr Business Man

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  • Unlocalhost@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You either die a hero slowly becomes a villain

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