ST Rian Johnson to write and direct Episode VIII (and also new SW Trilogy - see page 194)

Hmmm...food for thought I suppose.

I for one tend to think for myself, so their broad effort to drive a cultural wedge into my beliefs on race or gender issues aren't going to work. Not everything in life is ever that cut and dried anyway, but I digress.

I'm with @Krueger - I'm a SW fan above all else, so I primarily just stick to that on the boards. And political rhetoric rarely works on me, from either side of the aisle. To quote the late, great John Lennon: "I don't believe in Beatles - I just believe in me."

Being taken in by bots, or alt-righters, or misogynists, or whatever else has been put in our way to make us angrier than usual is saying more about the individual being taken in then the form that did it.

Anywhoo...I believe RJ's new trilogy will incur the wrath of tons of Russian bots.

 

If Geeks & Gamers is irrelevant with its 86,000 + subscribers, and its latest video with 42k views, well then whatever.

 

How much time do you spend on youtube? That's small. Ever hear of Angry Joe? Dude has almost 3 million subscribers. His TLJ criticism videos have 2.5 million and 1 million views. The anti-SJW crowd calls him an SJW. His highest rated video is on the video game Destiny and has nine million views.

Geeks & Gamers is nothing. Stop giving them attention. They love it, but even they know they're nothing.

 

And oh how Angry Joe's like ratio fares when he gets too SJW.

 

I'm sure he's crying in his chicken soup as his clicks and views continue to dwarf loser channels like Geeks & Gamers.

 

Hey. I thought we were done giving them attention.

 

I'm happy to give them the kind of attention that mocks them for being irrelevant. It certainly fits a certain agenda to elevate Geeks & Gamers as more significant than it is, and I'm happy to point that out as well.

 

That last sentence was unnecessary. I wouldn't accuse you of that, so don't go doing it to me.

I'm pointing out that the sentiment on YouTube is largely anti-SJW. Angry Joe is popular despite his leanings.

 

I wasn't accusing you of anything. Geeks & Gamers is routinely brought up and elevated beyond its significance (not by you, but generally), and that routine behavior supports a specific agenda.

Angry Joe is more popular than those channels, by a lot. Perhaps it isn't despite his leanings and it's actually because most people don't want to listen to that hateful ugly crap. Could it be?

Mauler's criticism videos are very popular on youtube. They get up toward a million views. He doesn't mention "SJWs" in any of his videos. I actually heard him on a live stream with anti-SJWs talking about it, and he said flat out he avoids using that kind of language because it would cost him views. You go the hateful conservative route, the whiny conspiracy-against-white-men route, you have some guaranteed viewers, but there's a max amount that you can get because it just doesn't appeal to most people.

 

I read the whole article and is only pointing that a lot of the tweets directly sent towards Rian Johnson that talked bad about the movie were politically motivated, i don't know why the headlines and the sites are saying that all critics towards the movie are supossed to be trolls or russian trolls whatsoever. The headlines of the news mentioning this study are too sensational

 

In the entertainment industry that’s a rounding error that those people represent. So yep pretty irrelevant in the game and scheme of things.

 

Same here....I saw the film on the first day and thought it was a lousy film and a far worse Star Wars film.

And why wasn’t there such a huge backlash against Black panther? Why did the Russian hackers not cause problems there? This seems like just another way to try to defend TLJ. Again someone is trying to say that really there weren’t a lot of people who disliked that “ magnificent “ film. “It was all the alt right and bots and Russian hackers who made it look like lots of people didn’t like TLJ.”

Plus, the way that both rey and Finn are treated in this film....a woman and a POC character, ..... was terrible! I would have thought that the alt-right would have loved the way that rey was pretty much demoted to serving Kylo in TLJ, and going from hating him to wanting to save him about an hour later after seeing him without his shirt; and having Finn be presented as a joke with that water pouring out of that suit. Just awful! The alt right should actually have LIKED this film.

 

YES

I just want to emphasize this because absolutely YES the exact same anti-SJW garbage was hurled at TFA. It didn't work then because that movie was incredibly popular and very well-liked. Obviously it had its dissenters, including people that were not part of that anti-SJW crowd, who just didn't like choices that were made for the franchise. But still, it ultimately wasn't as divisive a film among the fans because the masses aren't actually judging these movies on whether they have female or poc leads. These movies are ultimately judged on the story-telling.

All the emphasis on the irrelevant complaints against TLJ that are always there, whether one of these movies succeeds or fails, to me is just trying to undermine the very legit criticism and pretend that TLJ wasn't divisive among fans when I 100% believe that it was - based on story and characters, not based on rants against "forced diversity." Ironically, the guy behind G&G loved TFA. Although that channel is now all about hate-ranting against SJWs in SW, it was very pro-Rey, pro-Finn, and pro-Kylo, in the context of TFA. At the end of the day, imo, even a lot of the people injecting their weird conservative white-male-victimization politics into SW are really just complaining that TLJ is a bad movie.

 

Geeks and Gamers only gets mentioned because some posted videos from them here. It’s not about any one site though but significant aspects of the Conservative moment and their opposition.

Ben Shapiro’s video for example has 1.25 million views for The Last Jedi.

Before Alex Jones was removed from most known platforms he has 2.4 million Youtube subscribers.

The video “Gender Wars: The Last Snowflake” has 1.2 million views.

The video “SJW moments in the last Jedi has 500,000” views.

Now consider any one comments section or review site. How many of those exceed even 10,000 individuals? Not many.

 

Geeks and Gamers only gets mentioned because some posted videos from them here. It’s not about any one site though but significant aspects of the Conservative moment and their opposition.

Ben Shapiro’s video for example has 1.25 million views for The Last Jedi.

Before Alex Jones was removed from most known platforms he has 2.4 million Youtube subscribers. His anti-SJW TLJ wants were seen by over a million before he was taken down.

The video “Gender Wars: The Last Snowflake” has 1.2 million views.

The video social justice wars parody has nearly 750,000 views.

The video “SJW moments in the last Jedi has 500,000” views.

Geeks and Gamers sceeen capture or Kennedy as the emperor with text related to men has over 330,000 views.

Milo’s “Women ruined Star Wars” video also has over 300,000 views.

A video mocking the BLM movement with “Black Cyborgs matter” which is anti-social Justice has over 100,000 views.

Now consider any one comments section or review site. How many of those exceed even 10,000 individuals? Not many.

Marvel doesn’t have anywhere near the Conservative media’s attention for whatever reason. Probably because there’s a perception that Marvel has taken more of collective indifference toward who is in the theatre and what they believe overall.

 

Ben Shapiro is a different animal. He has 300k followers on his private channel and his channel exists to be political (in other words, it's not a SW or popular culture channel). The TLJ review was put up on a conservative news platform, not his personal channel, and that channel has 900k subscribers. The most popular video there looks like it's an anti-transgender rant and it has 3.6 million views. None of this is representative of online SW fandom.

If they're promoting conservative nonsense at people that can't get enough of conservative nonsense, that says something about the listeners of conservative nonsense. It doesn't say anything about SW fans.

 

Conservatives are a massive demographic of people though in all of the major markets where Star Wars has traditionally been most popular. Star Wars making an enemy of Conservatives is an enormous development.

Conservative media and alternative media all jumped on the anti-SJW popularity for views and thus Epsiode VIII gained a massive demographic enemy who then shouted alongside others more interested in plot specifics. Collectively, and especially on social media, this made the hatred more pronounced. The recent social media analysis gets into an aspect of this.

Most of the big Conservative media outlets had articles up related to identity politics. These aren’t small sites either. Sites that sometimes allow conservative guest voices like the Guardian (over 140 million unique views monthly) had articles on perceived liberal propaganda. Sites like Daily Wire (28 million unique visitors monthly went further and other sites like Breitbart with 6.4 million unique visitors monthly continue to troll and anger their base by carefully selecting the headlines they know will bring out the most angry comments related to this perceived attack on conservatism and men that some feel is ongoing.

 

All of those view counts are less than the counts for the TLJ review by the guy those a-holes call an SJW. Moreover, it's the same group of people watching the same crap out of a different mouths.

 

While I definitely agree that there is more genuine criticism of TLJ than there is from the hateful, anti-SJW criticism, you have to factor that into the overall amount of criticism there is of the film. You can't maintain there is genuinely half the fanbase that reasonably have criticism. There is genuinely half the fan base that has criticism, but only around 40% (I guess, I don't have actual numbers obviously) who's criticism is valid. There is a portion of the criticism that is genuinely vile and irrational - but, yes, it's not the majority.

 

"there is more genuine criticism of TLJ than there is from the hateful, anti-SJW criticism,"

i don't necessarily believe that. tlj was still the 2nd best selling home release behind black panther. tons of people saw it in the theater. some multiple times and many purchased it for home viewing. people that hate the film aren't doing that.

it's the same thing that happened with the prequels. the internet whiners gain momentum because they are the loudest, this then became the zeitgeist and then the popular opinion becomes "they suck", because most people are morons who don't think for themselves and instead follow the trend.

 

How does any of that contradict the idea that, of the criticism of the film, it was more genuine than not?

 

I hate the film and I bought TLJ because I am a completionist and I am sure many others have done that as well however after I saw Solo something just happened and I realized that I didn't need to own, read or see everything Star Wars anymore. While TLJ had a solid box office run it's sustainability in terms of performance week in and week out were less than TFA and Rogue one, TLJ was heavily front loaded in terms of BO. The Home video sales aren't what those of TFA were performing at around 50% or so and Star Wars merchandise has fallen off the face of a cliff with many companies like Hasbro seeing their profits fall since TLJ as the toys aren't selling. So while TLJ did have a lot of successes there are also some negative effect like the divided fan base the valid criticisms that exists out there the fact that it's probably more widespread than Disney would like to believe and less an issue that the haters make it out to be and people don't love Star Wars the way they used to because merch isn't selling. The fact that home video sales and merch have fallen since TFA does tell you that the criticisms isn't just coming from bots....

 

The person who this thread is about has been mentioned a grand total of once on this entire page. I understand it must be difficult to only be able to discuss the current topic of conversation in seemingly every other thread in this forum, but please, for god's sake, discuss the topic as laid out in the thread's title.

 

True. But paid Russian trolls and bots helped amplify those discussions considerably. It’s really about scale. From whining in a fringe corner of the internet to angry complaining about Rose’s race and gender in TLJ splashed all over social media, followed by blogs and entertainment rags declaring major divisiveness. They help blow the lid off simmering tensions. And over time, thats dangerous. Which is why intelligence agencies take it very seriously.

L

Exactly. The opposite, really. Exposing them becomes a necessary priority. And Twitter, Facebook and others can do a lot, lot more to help us distinguish between troll, bot and legitimate commenter.

Also, in my line of work, I really can’t ignore them.

Oops. Sorry! Rian Johnson.