Fans Start Petition To Shut Down Rotten Tomatoes
As Donald Trump bad mouths the mother of a fallen American soldier and as the Earth enters something like its 18th consecutive record-breakingly hot month in a row, fans of the DC movies have turned their attention to the truly troubling problems of our time: websites that are 'bias.'
A fan has started a Change.org petition demanding that Rotten Tomatoes be shut down because it's mean to DC films. Here's the text on the petition:
We need this site to be shut down because It's Critics always give The DC Extended Universe movies unjust Bad Reviews, Like
1- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 2016
2- Suicide Squad 2016
and that Affects people's opinion even if it's a really great movies
Is this a joke? We live in what should be called Poe's Era, as everything around us seems to trip over Poe's Law, but even if the initial petition is tongue in cheek, many of the comments seem pretty legit. Like this:
Unfair reviews.
Why is this important? Well, because in this day and age of social media, news articles and reviews of all things get spread very fast, and are often taken very seriously. Unfair reviews can end up ruining people's expectations to the point where they choose not to watch the movie at all (look what happened to bvs. I still find people who haven't watched the movie, even though they happen to be avid watchers of other superhero movies). And that's wrong on a multitude of levels. Movies get panned, lose potential watchers and even fans, and no studio deserves that. This will eventually lead to an imbalance in the industry. And that's a terrible thing to happen.
And this:
I'm a big comic book fan and I love DC and to see the rotten tomatoes again and again give the DCEU a bad rating is upsetting. I feel like the directors of the killing joke, suicide squad, and batman vs superman nailed the movie.
And this:
The Rotten Tomato Critics are most likely biased or being paid to give these bad reviews. People use them as a main source for reviews. They're giving people an opinion. People should have they're own. Not someone else's.
I've seen similar sentiments on the DC movies subReddit, with redditors promising to boycott Rotten Tomatoes for being anti-DC, which shows a truly fundamental misunderstanding of how Rotten Tomatoes even works. That's before we get to their profound misunderstanding of how criticism works (you see a lot of people complaining that critics are biased or not objective).
What's interesting to me is that this attitude isn't just restricted to comic book movie fans. It feels like we live in an era where anytime something doesn't go our way - whether it be a movie review or a presidential primary - the first reaction is to cry out conspiracy, to find ill will and mysterious forces moving behind the scenes. The reality, nine times out of ten, is that other people just didn't like the thing or the candidate you liked. But there's a comfort to be found in conspiracy theories, which allow you to feel wronged when you just simply lost.
