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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."
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.
They're trying to polarize both like and dislike for the movie and then cause both camps to draw an assumption about the political affiliation of the other camp. They're doing this with every element of pop culture that people disagree on. Like the summary says, the overarching goal is primarily to foster the public perception of increased social dysfunction from within and without.
Is there anything we can't blame them for?
Messing with elections is one thing, but messing with Star Wars is going way too far.
Table-ized A.I.
Rey is overpowered, definitely, but I didn't really have a huge problem with that. Kylo Ren is way overpowered, too, and way too deserving of the title "Darth Emo", though he was better in The Last Jedi.
That ridiculous Leia doing the Kryptonian sleep-flying back to the ship after getting explosively decompressed, modulo some blast damage from the weapons that tore the bridge apart... What were they thinking?
The utter stupidity of *dropping* bombs *in space*... *were* they thinking? Seems unlikely.
On the whole, I like the actors. But their performances were ill-served by the writing and directing. The whole thing was completely disjointed. It just felt sloppy, beyond the above stupidities. (None of which were the actors' fault.)
"But.... Russians!!" is the last refuge of the compleat idiot.
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 hated it. And yes, I 'm a russian troll that traveled back in time 15 years to get this username.
Red Letter Media: RED?! MUST BE RUSSIANS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
yeah, they present no actual evidence. This is literally the "Everyone I Disagree With Is A Russian Bot" mentality.
The Last Judi sucked ass. The box office reflected that only a little bit, because everyone had to see it for themselves. It had far fewer people seeing it multiple times, however.
The sales figures for the bluray (absolutely awful) reflect it.
The sales figures for the toys (absolutely awful) reflect it
The sales figures for Solo (absolutely awful) reflect it.
The sales figures for the Solo bluray (absolutely awful) reflect it.
If there's someone sewing discord in America it's people like Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson. These shitlords actively attacked fans and customers. They continue to double down on alienating the people who give them money when it doesn't work. Oh, the movie did poorly because we didn't listen to the fans and their concerns? Time to call our fans racist, sexist, etc. Time to say "the Force is female" and literally say we don't need male fans. Time to insult people for not "getting" that the new animated show (at a 10PM time slot) is shallow, bland shit because it's for kids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Disney doesn't understand Star Wars. They got a freebie with The Force Awakens because people wanted new Star Wars. They got a crappy ripoff of the original with major plot holes (who the fuck is making this map and why does R2 have a missing piece of it and if you have a portion of some map/tracking data why not just start searching in in the blank areas?). Adam Driver is a bad actor. Emo Darth Vader is a terrible character. Daisy Ridley is a plank of wood. Rey isn't a terrible character, but that's only because she isn't even a character. She's a foil, at best. A fucking Milhouse.
I won't see Episode IX in the theater. I'll wait for Redbox.
Your missing 3 zeros there buddy.
They said they found 30,000. Not 30. Between them they logged in 570,000 times , removed 220,000 'suspicious' applications that had generated over 2 billion tweets. (According to twitter)
So...yeah, vet your sources man.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.