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'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Negative Buzz Amplified By Russian Trolls, Study Finds (hollywoodreporter.com)
bestweasel writes: The Hollywood Reporter highlights an academic paper which finds that half of the criticism aimed at director Rian Johnson over Star Wars: The Last Jedi was politically motivated. From the report: [Researcher Morten Bay's paper] titled Weaponizing The Haters: The Last Jedi and the strategic politicization of pop culture through social media manipulation, examines the online response to the movie that has come to be considered controversial amongst the larger fanbase of the franchise. Bay suggests that reputation may not be earned, and instead "finds evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments." He continues, "The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation."
The paper analyzes in depth the negative online reaction, which is split into three different camps: those with a political agenda, trolls and what Bay calls "real fantagonists," which he defines as genuine Star Wars fans disappointed in the movie. His findings are fascinating; "Overall, 50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about the movie] was likely politically motivated or not even human," he writes, noting that only 21.9% of tweets analyzed about the movie had been negative in the first place. "A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls," Bay writes of the negative tweets. In response to a tweet announcing the release of the paper, Last Jedi director Rian Johnson shared the tweet, adding, "Looking forward to reading it, but what the top-line describes is consistent with my experience online."
The paper analyzes in depth the negative online reaction, which is split into three different camps: those with a political agenda, trolls and what Bay calls "real fantagonists," which he defines as genuine Star Wars fans disappointed in the movie. His findings are fascinating; "Overall, 50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about the movie] was likely politically motivated or not even human," he writes, noting that only 21.9% of tweets analyzed about the movie had been negative in the first place. "A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls," Bay writes of the negative tweets. In response to a tweet announcing the release of the paper, Last Jedi director Rian Johnson shared the tweet, adding, "Looking forward to reading it, but what the top-line describes is consistent with my experience online."
Cue the flood of Russian trolls denying it in 3... 2... 1...
I feel we should look the other way.
News flash, dinosaurs extinct due to russian trolls
"Russian Trolls" is code for "Straight white men".
Trump did collude with these people to win the election, and they were also upset to see one of their favorite childhood adventure epics reduced to leftist/feminist propaganda.
Tell me your problem. ...
And I will tell you the cause.
Russian trolls, not just any, but russian.
Or your trash movie was...wait for it...really trash!
Not the fact the movie was shit and just happened to piss all over one if the franchises most beloved characters, totally wasting any opportunity to use Luke Skywalker in any interesting capacity before unceremoniously killing him off.
For an example just look at the hearing last week.
Unless it's Russians all the way down.
You're a real hero! A BS story about a BS topic that has no importance in reality, except in your BS fantasy mind .. and you think you can just say "Cue the flood of Russian trolls denying it in 3... 2... 1..." and then that makes me automatically a troll!!!!
It DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT, son
Not interested in Disney's fanfic anymore. Made the mistake of seeing The Force Awakens. The plot was just a fan-service rehash of the original Star Wars and Rey was an annoying Mary Sue. So I just stopped giving Disney my money after that. Didn't make a YouTube video bitching about it or anything. I just stopped buying their toys and seeing their movies. Problem solved.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1oAi0hoJ_28
I donâ(TM)t know, COMPARED TO THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY, I do not need Russians to downgrade my review
Is there anything we can't blame them for?
Star Wars is and always will be Star Wars, and every generation has to accept the changes brought by the next, and every generation has in reality. These Russian trolls distracted people with mindless hatred with no meaning or value. They tried at least. Now, they failed. Witness the scattered desperate please "please keep hating this thing with no point". Putin is bad at this stuff, and really he always has been bad at it. Intelligence I mean. He doesn't have any.
Messing with elections is one thing, but messing with Star Wars is going way too far.
Table-ized A.I.
"The paper concludes that while it is only a minority of Twitter accounts that tweet negatively about The Last Jedi..." Oh so everyone else's opinion is valid then. It was a crap movie.
"more than half are bots, trolls/sock puppets or political activists using the debate to propagate political messages supporting..."
Yeah I know, I've been flooded with posts of FeministComicNerd, GenderFluidMovieRanter, and MarySuePenisHater about how Last Jedi is the greatest movie ever and
that Asian chick is important to the story and not at all to pander to Chinese audiences.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
You don't mean "All is not lost"; you mean "Not all is lost".
There is a huge difference.
(extended universe) lore by changing the entirety of the past 30+ years of fiction created after the original trilogy and respectfully skirting the areas Lucas had reserved for himself (notably the clone wars/anakin skywalker era and a variety of other less well documented areas I'm sure a licensed offer to better describe to us.)
As a result basically everything produced in the past 30 years has been rendered uncanonical, creating the same sort of mess as the 'TOS Klingon' vs TNG Klingon fanatics of Trek background, only on the scale of the ENTIRE BACKSTORY. It's a schism on the level of the Eastern Orthodox vs Catholics.
There's also credible evidence that Russian trolls have been preventing me from getting laid for the past couple years.
It was the Russian trolls the entire time! Now I can watch TLJ knowing that it was merely troll bias that ruined the movie and franchise.
But we are made of sterner stuff than that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
they're trying to sow discord in American society in order to weaken us politically. That's it. Nothing else.
And you know what? It's working. Not that we needed very much, given how Balkanized we are, but it's like a vial of blood in a shark pool...
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I can confirm the movie was crap! I do not need any Troll or Russian bot network to tell me otherwise!! What kind of study was this anyways?! Did this study not study the actual movie and only study the reviews?! Sounds like the movie industry is trying to Troll us and tell people otherwise!!
What possible benefit does Russia gain by spamming bad reviews for a movie?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
because that movie sucked ass.
The entire plot smelled like it was either written by, or sponsored by, an animal rights activist.
The entire side trip to Space Vegas was pointless and a waste of time.
I would almost rather re-watch episode II.
Not being a movie maker I can't say why, but the younger folks at my job like it and the old timers who grew up with the 1st 3 movies hated it. That's the thing, it's mostly young folks going to see movies. So they make moves for them. Not us.
As for Luke, as last Gen's hero he pretty much had to die. Same as Kenobi. I suppose a much, much better writer could have bridged the gaps, but that's a risky and Herculean task I can't blame Disney, or Ryan Johnson, for not trying.
Oh, and if we could just get a decent Star Wars game that wasn't a platform for micro transactions all would be forgiven. I'll be you 2/3rds of the nerd rage is up to that.
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Have these people ever considered the negative reviews are people giving their honest, articulated opinions of movies that are what's true and it's actually the overly positive reviews with no critical thinking that are propaganda? I can find the good in bad in any movie, as anyone can, but for me to be considered a Russian troll, or someone manipulated by them, for not liking every time Hollywood puts out some generic piece of shit film is insulting.
It's too bad there hasn't been "academic research" done to see who is paying for critics to leave positive reviews as if every movie is flawless.
Had nothing to do with Leia flying through space.
I really never got The Last Jedi freak out, Sure, there was the admiral with blue hair who for some unexplainable reason left her crew hopeless rather than tell them where they were going. And sure, in a civilization with sentient robots for some reason she needed to piloted a suicide attack against the chasing fleet. And sure, if that attack is so devastating why aren't there weapons that do that?
In the end though, at least the movie wasn't a fucking carbon copy of one of the original trilogy movies. The second it came up they were going on a third fucking Death Star run in The Force Awakens (complete with: "another Death Star?", "No! It's bigger, see...") I have had no use for that movie. What a terrible ending.
Rogue One is still easily the best of the new movies (that scene where the rebel fleet warps in right on top of those two star destroyers!? And a hammer head corvette doing its thing in action!?) but Last Jedi really wasn't that bad. Especially relative to just fucking copying a classic.
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The main thing that really bothers me about The Last Jedi, is that all the hate and trolling has managed to pretty much taint any and all actual criticism of the movie. You're now no longer allowed to be critical of anything in the film, without being labeled a misogynist, part of the "toxic masculinity", or whatever the trigger words are these days. Heck, I've even heard that some characters were written in such a way that you'd automatically labeled "part of the problem" if you don't like them.
Do I think the movie had issues? Of course I do. Are there characters I didn't like? Yes. Did I at least somewhat enjoy watching it? Also yes.
But do I think it was a terrible pile of garbage that everyone involved should be ashamed of and harassed endlessly over? Absolutely not.
But I now somehow feel awkward and uncomfortable actually expressing any criticism.
I thought is totally sucked. The Princess Leia in the vacuum of space flying while unconscious sealed it.
Star Wars is dead to me.
The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement
Just curious why the alt-right movement would bother creating discord & dysfunction? I'd think every political movement would want to send a narrative of "things are broken, and only we can fix them" and there are always countless examples that already exist, so there's no reason to create new ones.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
So the opening of TLJ has a serious tone, with the rebels escaping from the surface. A few minutes later a serious live or die attack on the dreadnought is turned into spaceballs. I honestly had to wonder whether I was in the right theater. Then the slow moving bombers drop bombs. No shields. And apparently the dreadnought attracts bombs. WTF?
Basically the entire story is that the entire rebel fleet is reduced to about a dozen people and a single small ship. Oh, and the supreme leader is killed - so the whole buildup was pointless. As was the whole of the first movie which revolved around delivering Luke's lightsaber to him and bringing him out of exile.
Oh, and the one part of the film that I thought might redeem it a little was destroyed; when Finn is prevented from sacrificing himself to save his friends, only to be sabotaged by some nutcase. If I were Finn I would have shot her myself there and then. And how did they get back? WTF?
Rotten Tomatoes and the results of Solo tell the story. Russian bots can fake those.
Wow, I guess my eyes were taken over by Russian bots to cause me to walk out greatly disappointed in the movie and wondering why I should ever pay to see a Star Wards movie in a theater again.
Was it really a good movie, and the bots changed what I saw? Amazing
We don't need trolls to do this, Hollywood has long been in the business of producing films to influence political opinion in the US. I guess if they push liberal agendas its ok (The First Purge, The Trump Prophecy, and Fahrenheit 11/9 are currently playing at the theater close to me) .
But, personally my biggest complaints about the movie were just the shear number of times I was yelling at the screen for the characters to do the logical thing. You know, like tell the hot shot renegade and the whole crew you have a plan other than just sitting around. Or why didn't the empire just radio ahead and setup and ambush, you know like the police would do? Heck, why could the tie fighters engage the rebel fleet but the main ships couldn't get any more speed out, was Scotty on shore leave (sorry, mixing universes). The whole movie could be summed up as a very slow chase scene in space with explosions. I could go on but seriously who ever reviewed the script should not work in Hollywood again.
When somebody is accused of 'stirring up shit' it could be worthwhile to recognize that, yes, the stuff they stir is shit. Then carefully step out of the fandom and perhaps clean your boots.
and every generation has to accept the changes brought by the next
Uhhh no we don't. We can just (mostly) not watch them, killing the franchise by denying Disney money.
Also...Putin cares about fucking Star Wars? Are you kidding me? Every asshole who wants to distract from their own unpopularity has found a convenient scapegoat, but I'm blown away anyone takes it seriously.
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so they will believe the lie.
https://ipfs.io/ipns/QmRjnvwZFj8bWba3HHKo7pnLm5kep4nvQepMcM1eejzgsn
Everything Star Wars EU is shit. I don't care if some of it later "officially" became "canon". REAL fans don't even count the special edition edits as canon.
Canon = The original cuts of the first 3 films (maybe including the "A New Hope" title), the Holiday Special, and the various PSAs of the time.
I thought it was pretty darn clear from TFS. I suppose our ruling class does it too now that you mention it.
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"..seriously who ever reviewed the script should not work in Hollywood again"
you will be committing a crime by bullying a handicapped transgender n1gger minority that worked hard out its stupid ass on that script.
Is the article trying to be non-divisive, or is it just another effort at PR spin by/for Disney?
Generations of fans will review a bad movie and tell the world about their thoughts. In real time using social media.
The real reviews by fans are shared and linked and show what the bad movie is all about.
Reviews did not make the bad political movie script the way it was.
What good reviews?
1. Write a great script and listen to the fans who will be happy to support a movie they enjoy.
Use the fan base. They really want to write good reviews and tell the world how much they liked a new movie.
A bad script and bad movie will not get good reviews. Find better people with real skills to make a much better movie.
2. Stay within what the fans want, expect and what the surrounding fiction supports.
Got a lot of past movies, books, comics surrounding the movie? Make sure the new movie fits with what is expected, published and understood. The fans can recall it all and will tell the world about what was done wrong.
3. Understand what has been published and what other movies had that audiences enjoyed.
4. Don't add strange new political topics that don't fit with years of past plots.
5. Understand who the movies is getting seen by. Dont add political topics that don't add to the story for that wider audience.
Want to make a new political space movie? Do it as a totally new project and see how it sells and reviews.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
the alt-right movement is just a bunch of guys who can't find good jobs and, as a result, women. It's not really a movement. It's what happens when you don't have enough decent paying work for men to have and raise families. Those men are being taken advantage of by what can only be called the American Aristocracy and a right wing propaganda machine. The goal is to talk them into supporting candidates who'll do the classic alt-right economics (trickle down economics, free trade, outsourcing, etc).
So far it's working. Donald Trump, who's essentially the lead for the movement, has staffed his admin with the same Goldman Sachs folks Obama, Bush Jr and Clinton did. Trump now supports all the provisions of the TPP (but he doesn't support "the" TPP) and he's busy deregulating Wall Street while giving them massive tax cuts (another $3.5 Trillion just passed the House while we were distracted by his SCOTUS nominee's scandals).
Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren are doing their best to reach out to them, but it's tough. There's a giant propaganda machine out to get them. Also the Dem's don't have Reagan's Eleventh Commandment so they eat their own (re: Al Franklin). Meanwhile the GOP is happy to give those angry guys any number of enemies to rail against (feminists, SJWs, basically "social" enemies that distract from economic issues). Not sure if Bernie & Liz are going to succeed, but they're definitely trying.
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Analyzed were only tweets directed at Rian Johnson.
Those 967 tweets were split into:
- 761 positive or neutral tweets which were not further analyzed for political agendas or sock puppets or (Russian) trolls (78.7%)
- 101 negative tweets of real users without "agenda" (10.4%)
- 61 negative tweets of real users with "agenda", i.e. right-leaning content on their account (6.3%)
- 17 trolls/sock puppets (1.75%)
- 16 trolls/sock puppets, that appear to be Russian (1.65%)
- 11 bots (1.1%)
Funny that they would say it was "Russian trolls" that panned the movie. No It was everyone!! The movie sucked! Everyone hated it! Even the Russian trolls hated it too. Your research is stupid when you limited the scope to just "Russian Trolls"... So How much did Disney pay to have this research done to try and blame "The Russian troll".. Disney your movie sucked! and Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy killed the franchise! Even my kids don't want to see anymore Star Wars movies!
This century is when Russia finally found what it's good at. Or, more to the point, it knew all along - but the skill was not in demand until now. Only with the world fully interconnected the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.
Russia has never been much for productive development. But ability to endlessly argue for the sake of an argument and troll is ingrained in the culture and the language. It was not of much use before when any information produced locally stayed local. Now that they have world-wide reach - things are looking up for them.
The rest of the world will just have to learn to live with it, and to pay less attention to the professional trolling. I fear that may not be an easy task.
This Russian stuff is interesting. It's a thing that, if you acknowlege, marks you as someone with mental problems. If someone doesn't tell you you're crazy, you'll be self conscious about it anyway. You'll keep it to yourself.
The goal here is to shatter all sense of community in the West, on all levels. Tech boards, music communities, art boards, fandoms, obscure fetish boards, no theater is unsuitable for feeding the fires of our cultural civil war. People are fighting their battles everywhere against everyone on everything. To agree to disagree is impossible if you're driven to anger over another's decision in art, politics, reading material, choice of bike, choice of phone, etc. You can be further driven to hate and fear if it's tied to the wider culture war: SJWs vs Skeptics. Feminists vs Men's Rights. Globalists vs Nationalists. Post Modern vs Modern. Labor vs Capital. Walkable Cities vs Freeway Sprawl. Healthy Food vs Junk Food. All, ad infinitum, forever.
This is a legitimate tactic to inflame these existing tensions were ever they may be. The more rediculous it is the more it's harder to acknowledge. You're seeing it, but you can't believe it. So your ignore it... or you post your cringy thoughts anonymously.
Rant over, that is all. No one will know that I'm crazy, but I will know I'm a coward.
Search Last Jedi
Apparently all the Russian Trolls have excellent English and live in America as American citizens.
Look, if you agree with Disney's and Hollywood's political agenda of feminist superiority, fine. But I know a lot of what the Russkies have done, and the meme is even getting tired for me. What is interesting is the same old same old blame everything but the possibility that you made a politicized movie with a not so good story line that simply isn't enjoyable to watch.
Especially since the people you now cater to don't go to your movies. Multiple times. And buy the critical profitable action figures and toys. I'm curious, did the Russian Trolls get China to pull "The last Jedi" out of theaters?
But enough of the sorry state of Hollywood social Justice driven films.
I've been Netflix watching the old "Star Trek Voyager"series, especially since I've become jaded lately. I for one reason or another never saw it when it was on it's run. And there isn't anything conservative about any Star Trek series. Female captain on a non-conservative Sci-Fi show. I should hate it, amirite?
It was like a freaking breath of fresh air, even if not the best of the ST series. Janeway is a great Captain, managing to be the captain without being what today passes for feminism, which is a lot of whining, complaining and misandrism. She does this while still being a female, not an ersatz male. She reminded me of many of the female scientists I worked with. No one's fool, but not a jerk. That's the kind of strong woman I can get behind. And any politics is very gentle, hidden in the story line, and not whining in your face. Just enjoyable to watch.
Now it is possible that Hollywood will continue their misandry with films that feel the need to replace mixed sex reboots with all female casts, and to make politicized movies espousing their hatred, but when you actively yell "Fuck You" at 49.2 percent of your possible viewers, well, hope they have very very deep pockets.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And people are surprised there was a backlash on political grounds? That film was asking for trouble.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
In this case it's a Canadian troll denying it. The idea that Russians care about American reactions to a movie in order to spur discord fails the sniff test on a few counts.
1) Americans are already tearing themselves apart quite handily on their own. The bi-party system is just fundamentally broken. What "your" party does is always ok, and what the other party does is demonized even when they are the same thing. The Republicans can block a democratic supreme court nominee by using control of the senate to block discussion on it, and for Republican supporters that is justified and the Democrats all cry fowl. The Democrats can demand an investigation into criminal allegations of a Republican nominee and the Republicans all cry fowl. If things continue like they are going, US elections will devolve into something like UK football match on a country-wide scale. There will be violence in the streets. At best.
2) The Last Jedi was patently awful all on its own, Russian trolls weren't needed. JJ Abrams' movies and their follow-ons have done what JJ Abrams' have always done throughout the Star Trek and Star Wars movies he's done, which is take all the old story lines, toss them in a blender, hit frappe, and pour out regurgitated Sci Fi shakes with sprinkles of new FX on top. They really are Star Wars for millennials.
Americans just take themselves waaayyyyy too seriously. Sure, a healthy ego is not necessarily a bad thing, but seriously.... listen to yourselves. "Russians are trolling our movie reviews in order to make us hate each other".
This is the most ridiculous/hilarious thing I've read all day. The movie was crap. That's pretty much all there is to it. No amount of manufactured excuses will change that, Hollywood and Disney are both pathetic beyond belief.
are russian trolls the new thanks obama?
The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society.
So it was the trolls who argued that it was a good movie?
Because I've yet to meet a person who thinks it is, so that clearly is not the majority opinion of the non-trolls (or at least the non-paid trolls).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Obviously this is a nefarious plot to destroy American culture by taking down the Star Wars franchise. Will the country survive?? /sarcasm
If Rocky and Bullwinkle returned to TV, this could be one of the story lines.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If the conclusions are accurate, and more than half of the negative comments belong to trolls, I have to say that in this case, the trolls have it right. The current incarnation of Disney seems utterly devoted to sucking all the joy, edginess and originality out of their movies to deliver serviceable but soulless flicks that are barely adequate as a Friday night time-waster on any half-decent home entertainment setup. But after a Friday night out at the theatre, you leave feeling ripped off. I can see some bean counter with a clipboard going down a list of proven focus group pleasers, ticking off each one: leap from high place to extended leg squat landing...check. Sardonic eyebrow raise...check. Heroic death of expensive old actor to clear the way for cheap young replacement hero...check.
Anybody who has read my comments here know I'm far from conservative, but in this case the fans alleged to have a case of toxic masculinity (and the Russian trolls, apparently) have my complete support.
This movie disappointed me. It had no imagination, no spark of originality, no sense whatsoever that the characters had any purpose but to march along their pre-defined paths to a pre-defined conclusion. I'd call them shallow and undeveloped, but that would be a gross insult to puddles and fetuses. And the ending was simply the place where our dollars get directed to the next movie by way of the merch store. It has never been more obvious that Disney regards us as nothing but wallets with legs, and anything that gets between them and the contents is extraneous and a waste of money.
So yes, The Last Jedi sucked. It didn't suck because they made a girl the hero. It sucked because I am old enough to remember how I felt when I saw, on the biggest screen in Toronto, that Star Destroyer pursuing Princess Leia's little ship in the first minutes of the very first movie.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Because of all the Russian trolls who didn't buy tickets.
Please fuck off.
I remember being called an idiot, a lunatic, and a bigot when I saw politically-motivated media collusion take place against gamers. This is totally something only conservatives and Russians do.
Signs everywhere encouraging people to "boycott the bourgeois elections", these signs were put up and funded by the Russian communist party
Di$ney doesn't really give two shits about the quality as long as it brings in profits.
The Last Jedi was so bad I didn't even bother to see Solo. Just done wasting money on it at this point.
10/10 troll.
So now everything is the fault of the Russian boogieman. This claim is so pathetic, that who ever wrote it must be a pathetic loser.
Seriously, Last Jedi was pure garbage. The movie didn't need any help achieving that consensus. It really was a complete garbage of a story.
Plenty of left-leaning bots licking his "white cis male" balls for this "work". Facepalm.
As a long time Star Wars (and Star Trek) fan, any effect by Russian Ai posters was not the cause of Last Jedi's negative press. The Last Jedi was the cause of it's own negative press. It was worse than the still-maligned Sw prequels. It was worse than ST Space Teens, etc. TLJ was more insulting, worse written, and destructive to the movie series as well. Alternately, Solo was a great movie that could stand on it's own merits, but was shunned as part of the fan's turning away from the mistake that the LJ movie was.
The so-called russian trolls and bots have had their fun, playing fast and loose with lofty western ideals such as democracy, fairness, honesty, etc, and undermining our precious freedoms.
Now they've decided to fuck with the mouse. They should have sent someone to spend a few months embedded as cast or crew at a Disney resort or park, and learned just what happens to anyone tarnishing the image. They won't know what's hit them.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
there is a small core of genuine populist Democrats. Bernie, Liz, Orcasio-Cortez and the "Justice" Democrats. Their defining feature is that they refuse all corporate donations (you can't serve two masters after all). Yeah, there's also a lot of Pelosi style "blue dogs" but even they've been forced towards populist ideas by an increasing number of primary challengers.
I don't know any equivalent on the Republican side; e.g. a movement in their party to stop taking corporate cash. Dems also support Net Neutrality, Single Payer health care, the "New New Deal" (e.g. infrastructure spending and a jobs guarantee), free college, etc. There's solid policy there and not just more "Lets cut taxes and see what happens, and by the way no Medicare for anyone under 55".
There _are_ differences between the parties. Substantial ones. And when it comes to a party that can potentially be bent to serve the will of the people the Dems are the best chance. For the reasons I stated above that's just objective fact.
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Ok people, so russians are just sitting around and trying to fuck with us by putting a negative review on one of the shittiest movies in the past 10 years? Even if russia wasn't involved the movie sucked, it was barely watchable.
Honestly, with all these trolls having such *based* opinion these "investigations" into their activities are just making me a fan of Russian trolls.
Yep... its true... no evidence, just believe me.
Nice setup there. "Cue the Russian trolls"
The film was awful in a dozen levels. They have a ridiculous Mary Sue problem. The supporting characters are useless and uninteresting. The villain is an angry goth teenager. They shat all over Luke's character. The plot was horrendous. They abandoned canon. And Leia flew through space like Mary Poppins.
Signing off from Moscow,
Vladimir
....yes? Oh, I was late for work the other morning - the Russians must have been involved. Justice League was a shitty movie - must have been the Russian's fault.
Because reasons.
Not that TLJ is an objectively shitty movie. The whole lightspeed ram that wrecks 40 years of continuity. Why build a Death Star when you can get a few junk freighters and use them as mass drivers against a planet? Why did the Alliance bother with those Death Star plans when a half dozen Kamikaze runs in quick succession could have disabled either of them? Why did Luke, who risked everything to save a mass murdering father he barely knew (and succeeded!!!!) decide to cut down his own nephew, who he's known his entire life, because he suspects the kid might be going to the dark side?
Riiight. In the same way that if you questioned Obama's drone strikes or bank bailouts, you were in the same camp as the people who questioned his birth certificate.
Because reasons, because false dichotomies.
Yeah, you hit one one of the prime reasons. Why bother building expensive X-Wings and training expensive X-Wing pilots when you could take any thousand year old personal shuttle that can make lightspeed, put a thousand year old droid in control, and use them to disable/destroy a Star Destroyer. Why didn't Alderaan's defensive fleet (they must have had something) all go Kamikaze on the Death Star within a minute of it dropping out of orbit. Why bother building a Death Star when you could load up some ancient freighters and use them as mass drivers to exterminate all life on a planet.
And so on. This was a much more severe hurdle in the suspension of disbelieve than sound effects and aerial banking maneuvers ever were in space.
Indeed, it was much worse. Most of the primary characterizations were crap, like turning Finn into a coward after he defected from the First Order, knowing that was signing his own death warrant. But the real hairball of the movie was what they did to Luke Skywalker. They took a man who risked everything to save a mass murdering father he never knew - a risk that succeeded not just in saving his father but the rebellion itself - to one that would cut down his own nephew. Who he's known his entire life. Because he might be falling to the dark side.
GTFOH, Rian Johnson.
The study is just as trash as the movie. Anyone with a non-liberal political view in other tweets is a troll / political activist especially if they had made a positive tweet about Trump or, failing that, had been critical of liberal politics at any point. He also only counted tweets directed as the director rather than tweets regarding the movie itself - because in fairness if I was performing a study on tweets about #thelastjedi I would totally ignore these and instead do a study of tweets at @rianjohnson. Any account with positive feedback was considered non-political based on criteria no greater than "the accounts contained photos". So if a tweet was positive and appeared to be from a person it was deemed the tweeter was non-political regardless of their twitter activity.
If the general sentiment was so overwhelmingly positive then Disney wouldn't be finding excuses to reduce the frequency of movies. The reality does not in any way match the findings of his trash study. But in social "science" departments facts don't matter, it's all about dem feelz.
Fuck BeauHD and his stooopid articles for stooopids
Given that every major corporation has more budget than Russia for this sort of thing (PR, marketing, etc), and the USA has ten times that, at least, I would not say that there are no Russian trolls. There definitely are Russian trolls. But no matter how effective they work, they are simply overrun by "OMGRussianTrolls” trolls.
In the end, NOTHING in the media can be trusted. Where "the media" *especially* includes "news" aggregator sites and "social" networks. (As PR/advertisement is the most effective, if people believe it's just their buddies / in-group telling them.)
Want the real deal? Go look at it yourself!
Or at the very least, have a friend that you know *personally* and know you can trust, have a look at it.
Where "it" always means the real physical event. Never ever anything recorded or written, unless it's about the act of writing/recording that.
If you can't do that, then check your immediate surroundings for if it actually does have an effect on your actual reality. Because more often than not, it does not, *at all*. ... And if it serves you, it's not like you could not *also* use the dollar. ... Taxes? Yes, and remember that if the dollar falls in worth, the taxes are gonna get *lower* for you. [As everyone's salary will fall, but your products' worth will stay the same. YOU will be one of the things that get more expensive.)
(E.g. if you're a small farmer, what do you care about the "economic crisis"? You don't even need to use dollars, or even money, at all. Inherited farm, solar electricity, own well, food right in front of the door, and a town nearby that is happy to exchange whatever you need for that food.
So Americans are all Russians without realizing it. Every single one.
I always suspected that rednecks and those funny Russians on YouTube were the same thing. They like the same silly rural forms of entertainment, have the same hobbies, and live in the same shitholes... In a sane world, they'd be best friends.
I have a really hard time getting my head around how these troll accounts work.
For reasons that have yet to be explained, someone - likely a government agency - has decided to put resources into making nerds hate something.
These troll accounts are identifiable by - what exactly? Do they wear furry Russian hats? Is there an objective way of determining which are Russian Troll accounts and which are idiots on the internet? And how do they get followers in the first place? They can't influence anyone if they just follow each other, surely.
If a bot said it liked The Last Jedi it would be immediately spotted as a fake.
OK, let’s see who the real trolls are.
First and foremost, Disney/Hollywood themselves. Just like the banking crisis of 2009 does not make sense from economy point of view but makes perfect sense when viewed as a deliberate crime, TLJ makes no sense as a movie (since it breaks/ignores/shits on just about every rule of filmmaking/storytelling) but it makes perfect sense as a cultural subversion propaganda. They had a checklist of politically motivated issues they wanted to see in, and to hell with logic, reason, consistency, universe building, military strategy or basic common sense.
Now, the first mistake they make is to assume that the classical archetypal story of the hero on a journey has anything to do with the “patriarchy”. Unless you extend the patriarchy all the way back to lobsters.
So, in desire to demolish the oppressive (in their view) human mythology they offered new archetypes for the new millennium. Which they perfectly have the right to do. And we have the right to judge this new mythology and either accept it or reject it. Alas, Darth Kennedy does not offer viable alternative at all. Their version is: have pussy, will travel. That’s it. The female protagonists are perfect beings by inception, no needing hardship, training, education, struggle or any adversity whatsoever. Perfect.
/. does not allow me to post my full story which I prepared in word and checked many times for errors. I get the lameness filter detected.
Then we have the baddies which are portrayed as angry, half-psychotic Nazis. Onlyone of the most dangerous things you can do is to dismiss the evil as lunatics and misattribute their evilness to fear and/or anger. Whereas the real Nazis were anything like that (disgust motherfuckers, not fear or anger). You don’t make them look like buffoons, because that diminishes the warning message to the viewer that such things should never occur again. And you never, ever portray them as incompetent, because real life evil men are always competent and intelligent. After all, if the real Nazis were so incompetent how come they almost conquered the world? Also, if the baddies are incompetent what is the challenge for the protagonists (none; that is why I repeat, it does not make sense as storytelling or a movie, only as propaganda)?
Then you have the sacrifice of consistency (ramming at light speed) simply to redeem admiral purple hair for her incredible stupidity and lack of viable strategy that left the rebels with a handful of people in one ship. But it was much more important to shame the men than to make sense or save lives. Utter desecration of Carry Fisher’s memory with that space Marry Poppins shite. Vile, deliberate, nasty, revolting assassination of the male’s archetypes – Solo and Skywalker. Nothing here is by accident. Nothing is “courageous filmmaking subverting audience’s expectations”.
Then trolls number two are the media. Obviously, the axes were already grinded and ready to swing when the reactions started coming in. Critics lied to all of us out of fear, conformism or being paid; the people did not take that shit and voted the movie down; immediate reaction – RT is highjack by bots, trolls, armies of alt-right, Russiansblah, blah, blah. The press is trolling us ALL THE TIME.
Trolls number three are the /. editors who would scour the net for click baits and present to our attention the opinions of absolute nobodies, if it guarantees an outrage that would rile us.
You see, the original archetypal story of SW does not belong to the West; it belongs to all humanity (that was the intention of George, right, consulting Campbell and so on..). Therefore, the reactions of outrage from China, Russia, East Europe etc.. have nothing to do with anti-west sentiments. Instead what is obvious to non-westerners is that most of the political discourse as well as the media in the West is highjacked by the PC, SJW, neo-Marxists scum who’s trying to replace the archetypes that are older than humanity itself with their murderous, racists, sexist, bigoted “point of view”. So, the push back is not against westerners as a whole but against the above mentioned plague that threatens to destroy the fairest and most humane societies on earth (they have flows, of course, but show me someone better and someone who is constantly improving themselves, I’ll wait).
A shit is a shit, never mind how much you stir it.
Russians or whoever talks about it, it was a bad joke.
What about the Christmas album?
... and alt-right and Russians are at fault. Sure. Maybe Disney needs several billions of compensation from the budget? Just in case.
That's what I liked about the "next generation" Star Trek series. Sometimes you don't even realize how awesome an individual woman is because she FITS with the ensemble. They don't need to stick out 100% of the time to be an essential part of the crew because they (as most strong women) are confident in themselves.
This depiction of confidence has been lost in more recent years. It's been replaced by this strange NEED to stick out and be prominent above being part of a team, unable to work in the background for no fanfare and yet know you are doing something important. Also, you must make a woman the most important character, even so far as to have the other male characters admit that they are inadequate (which is rare in reality, why put yourself down when you're also part of the team?) See recent Doctor Who clips to see what I mean.
It's like as women are being told they're this much more important in our culture, a kind of subconscious "imposter syndrome" is happening with the way female roles are written. I don't like it because the confidence feels shoehorned in, probably by people who have no idea what it feels like to be a confident person in the first place. So a lot of the failed movies and TV series and such are being written by people who are hoping that no one will notice they can't write truly confident women, only aggressors and sarcastic assholes, because that's the passive-aggressive way of getting power.
There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but in all the female roles I disliked the most, they had the same weaknesses of character covered up with an asshole mask. (And yes, I mean to critique the roles, not the actresses themselves... sigh...)
Was bored out of my mind on a long flight and figured, "how bad could it be?". Turns out, pretty damn awful, got through maybe half of it and then decided it's better to wallow in boredom than to suffer any more of that butchery of film history.
Look at how they are destroying politics and culture by saying a movie is bad!
I thought this was a joke when I saw the article earlier this morning. I can understand them saying "political motivation" due to the "how dare you do SJB crap" some people are saying about non white and also colorful hair characters.... But at the same time, most everyone that I know that saw the movie considers it between "awful" and "ok." At best it was an ok summer action popcorn movie not worth more than one watch.
It is pretty great that part of their defense of the movie's bad ratings is: "Russia!"
Bad movie, cooked up by SJWs who want to push their agenda, trashing an existing franchise in the process. I mean, it is Disney's money to burn, but it is stupid.
And no, I'm not a Russian troll bot or anything. Maybe some bots spammed something, who cares. It is still a bad movie and Disney clowns should feel bad.
I found this piece in the paper. Which one of these is true?:
Even if you don't count the pathetically small sample size the whole study falls apart as soon a you scrutinize it even a little bit.
First of all only 20% of all the comments in their dataset were negative and of that 20% half was clearly identified as disappointed fans. Of the remaining 10% about 2/3 were dismissed as coming from "politically motivated" accounts and when you finally reduced it down to the "Russian trolls" they only made up about 1.6% of the total dataset. Worse yet, these trolls were "identified" trough things like generic user names, grammatical errors in their posts (as if everyone who saw the movie spoke perfect English) and no pictures (as if everybody on twitter who isn't a troll has one).
If this and how widely it's been reported without as much as a glance towards the fundamentally flawed underpinnings tells us anything it's that the country is in the grip of another political hysteria much like the one whipped up by McCarthy's & Co in the 1940s and 50s.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
And yes, it does now mean that Star Wars is a matter of patriotism, and that not liking the movies approaches treason.
And you guys used to mock us for seeing "Reds under our beds".
Feminists, SJW, libertarians and their sycophants ruin everything.
What? The movie was terrible from a story standpoint AND as an addition to the franchise, which has been in turmoil
The people involved in the starwars franchise openly hate "white men"
You don't need Russia to tell you that's bad for business
Sincerely,
Not a Russian
Or, using Occam's Razor -- The Last Jedi was a shit movie. My personal experience agrees with this also. I am not a bot (and I'm not just saying that because I am a bot, even if that is something a bot would say).
A joint NSA/FBI team was able to capture audio from one of the suspect IP addresses, in which a man's voice was clearly heard to say "Must kill moose and squirrel".
I don't think those were Russian trolls. I think the Russians didn't like the movie either. Neither did the AI bots that were posting about it.
We made it PRECISELY according to the committee-approved 'Star Wars action film' formula, how could it not be perfect?
I mean:
When the focus groups showed kids found it stultifying, we added cute little things that were optimized for cheap production according to our Vietnamese factories. They are perfectly designed by slave-labor engineers to be adorable.
When the focus groups showed Asian viewers thought it was stupid, we bolted onto the story a pudgy Asian chick, hopefully snagging the 'all body images are positive' demo as well.
We made the lead character a woman because powerful vaginas are super-trendy now.
We added gay dudes because well duh, you have to have gay people in an adventure.
We employed only faceless mediocrities, pretty much just like George Lucas did (except we did it so we could lock them into lifetime contracts of servitude).
WE EVEN MADE THE BAD GUY A WHITE MAN. How could that possibly be wrong in 2018?
We clearly hit all the IMPORTANT mechanics needed to make a perfect film; it had to be Russians that fucked this up.
-Styopa
Overall, 50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about the movie] was likely politically motivated or not even human...
Or - I don't like that they didn't like the movie, so I'm going to blame bots an Russians just because and provide no proof, instead saying likely so I have an out when someone punks out that I did no research.
Maybe they're Russian fans of Star Wars who also thought there were ridiculous elements to the movie?
...the new "Global Warming".
Seems fair.
If the irrational fear of Russian trolls is what it takes to get Americans to **think for themselves again, then bring on the trolls!!
Was a lifelong SW fan. Saw the trailer for TFA and... I just didn't care. That was odd as I had continued to watch (and sometimes be frustrated with) the prequels and the Clone Wars series. TFA *looked* like Star Wars, but I just didn't care, so I never watched it.
A friend highly recommended Rogue One, which I thought initially starred the girl from TFA since they look alike at a very casual glance. It seemed like mediocre generic scifi until about 2/3 through. Neither of the two primary characters seemed to have any personality; the only ones I thought were memorable were the blind guy and his warrior buddy. Those two were fun.
The only distinct impression made by it was when the scrawny, powerless main character (I don't remember her name), bare fist punched out an armored Storm Trooper. That had me doubled over with laughter at how bad it was.
This is the movie that's supposed to be the best of the new SW. So, no thank you.
CNET's take is "No, half of The Last Jedi haters were not Russian trolls". They're position is that it's a lot more complicated: the sample set was only 1k tweets directed at Rian Johnson, and so missed all the others (eg: those to Mark Hamill, who has way more followers); the researcher manually "cleaned" the tweets, removing ones he didn't think applied; he decided himself what was a negative vs positive vs neutral, leaving it open to argument; and the media reporting is distorting the numbers and conclusions.
A recursive sig
Can impart wisdom and truth
Call proc signature()
The so called "study" is a study only in piggybacking on sensationalism and stirring up division.
Author, one "Morten Bay, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Center for the Digital Future USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism" is himself, functionally, a troII.
Whether he is also intentionally peddling and hyping fraudulent studies to increase his media exposure or is just a victim of his own incompetence... that's up to debate.
But let's just say that he didn't pick a less popular franchise for his "study".
Anyway...
The Fraudulent Study found following...
Examining 967 tweets (that's TWEETS - not accounts), made "between December 13, 2017 and July 20, 2018." on a platform where around 6000 tweets are made each second, "206 expressed a negative sentiment towards the film and its director, which is 21.9% or a little more than one in five fans."
Out of those 206... "Using the Botometer mentioned in the Method section, 11 out of the of 206 accounts expressing negative sentiments were identified as bots."
But that's not all!
Our boy Morten also claims that through his spider senses he "identified 33 of the 206 negative accounts as troIIs and/or sock puppets."
Out of those 33 trolls and socks...
16 of these 33 troII/sock puppet accounts appear to be Russian trolls, or at least possess several of the Russian troII characteristics presented above.
Anyway... author claims he looked through some 967 tweets aimed at Rian Johnson, over a period of 6 months, finding 11 tweets made by probable bots, and 16 he thinks may be Russian.
Cause their language skills were poor, their names were generic and they had no profile photos.
7 of the 16 had auto-generated handles consisting of a very common, English name followed by a series of seemingly random digits, and five of those seven had not uploaded a profile image, a combination which according to the studies mentioned above, is a typical characteristic of Russian troII accounts.
Out of those 16, 4(?) were actually identified as Russian troIIs.
@1popculturefan, @MarcoSo94862885, @VPalmera and @ThatNikkaGeeked.
Also, there is another account retweeting @1popculturefan which is, maybe, also a Russian troll/sock.
It doesn't help that the author keeps interchangeably referring to tweets as accounts.
Or that there is no summary of tweets or accounts.
Thus one can't tell if he's referring to some of the same accounts (or tweets) when he says that "6 of the 16 accounts have an extremely high retweet rate" and "9 accounts have been through the "resets"" while "4 accounts present themselves as a type of news source".
Are those 6 among the 9? 4 among 6? Who knows!
On a side note, TIL that using the word "troII" more than a certain number of times in the text activates Slashdot lameness filter.
Luckily, bitches don't know about my upper case i.
Oh, and the movie did suck.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In Soviet Russia, Last Jedi pan YOU!
I am not a russian troll and I approved this message.
Who think their parents' lives are over, too (Oh! Carrie Fisher! Too Old!)
And, having just seen Solo last month, I say it's a good story, and I suspect Lucas had his fingers in it... up to the elbows.
And if you disagree with me, you're wrong, and you're not going to change my mind, because your *opinion* is bs except for you.
Remember when "Troll" meant "asshats saying shit to get a rise out of you" instead of "astroturfing political shill"?
Really! Russian Trolls should have made the movie.
It couldn't be worse.
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't.
REAL fans...from Scotland?
You're trying to rationalize a movie that involves space magic, and deflecting bolts of plasma energy with sword play.
Put the plot in the context of being just a loose framework in order to tie visually stimulating CGI action scenes together within a reasonable amount of time, then it might begin to make more sense.
it was a pretty major win and paves the way for the progressives. They can still screw us over on a second ballot, but those are so rare (last one was in the 70s) that it's not really a victory.
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If any of you had actually the mental capacity to read the study you would know its bullshit.
Out of 1000 accounts 16 have been defined as bot and the definition they give is "pro trump, anti sjw".
But of course you all just want puke your unfounded uneducated opinion into the internet because its about what you think and not about facts.
Thats why social media these days is basically poison and nothing more than public masturbation.
What? Someone had to say it...
the Sharks won't turn on each other. It doesn't take much, but it does take _something_.
Like 9/11. It barely had an impact on the US until we made it impact us by going nuts and invading several countries that didn't attack us or our allies. Those wars have wrecked our country for generations and made us hated on the national stage. Mission accomplished.
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or why it didn't do gangbusters. It just made the point that the Russians were using it to try and drive another wedge between communities.
Didn't you have that one kid who always tried to start shit between people in grade school? This is like that, except between nations. If America didn't have so many bombs and so much blood thirst it would be funny.
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Mark f'n Hamill criticized the movie. I think it's pretty safe to say bad things about it in the nerd community when you've got a Jedi Master on your side.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
When the next progressive darling cucks out to the establishment favorite, because reasons, I'll try to contain my surprise.
"Overall, 50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about the movie] was likely politically motivated or not even human,"
So the movie was so bad that even non-humans hated it?
Trolls or not, this movie was so bad on so many levels, and that is why I didn't like it. Not because of anything anyone anywhere said.
I feel bad for all the people who worked so hard on it, and Rian Johnson just made so many crappy decisions, particularly almost the entire story.