Over the last couple of years, the act of ‘review bombing’ on sites like Rotten Tomatoes has grown in popularity. Posting tonnes of negative reviews in order to harm the reputation or sales of a particular brand, or in this case movie, has become a popular form of disruption for certain internet groups.
This has been seen particularly in the case of female-led films, especially those tied to a well-known franchise. From the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters, to Star Wars’ The Last Jedi, and now Marvel’s latest blockbuster, Captain Marvel, internet users have posted pre-release reviews in order to negatively sway the overall public reputation of the film.
Rotten Tomatoes has decided to remove the audience pre-release review functions in order to combat trolls negative “review bombing”.
However, in response to these “review bombers”, Rotten Tomatoes has decided to no longer allow pre-release reviews. In a statement released by Rotten Tomatoes, they outlined some of the coming changes to their audience review functions.
“We are disabling the comment function prior to a movie’s release date. Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership. We have decided that turning off this feature, for now, is the best course of action. Don’t worry though, fans will still get to have their say: Once a movie is released, audiences can leave a user rating and comments as they always have.”
Naturally, certain internet types are pretty pissed about this. But I’m sure they’ll be able to put on their big kid pants and get over it.
Via Pedestrian
