Saturday, April 11, 2009

Where The Real Fever Swamps Are...

AbdicatingTheirResponsibility
OnlineEditorVille


I dunno about you, but I've had it with CorpMedia comment threads.

And I'm not just talking about TMZ here.

No.

Instead, I'm talking about threads attached to 'legitimate' pieces in 'legitimate' media outlets.

Oh, sure, they have moderators. But mostly the mods seem to be there to make sure you don't use expletives and/or say anything that will piss off either the advertisers or the not-so Magnificent AsperSons.

As a result, the codswallop that gets posted, often pretty much from top to bottom, is truly astonishing.

I mean, in aggregate, it's about infinity times infinity worse than YouTube Flamers.

And sometimes it's just plain dumb.

Take the following, for example....

First, an IM-type parody that was yesterday's NY Times review of the latest Cyrus/Disney/Evil InnaCarCrate Extravaganza from Jeannette Catsoulis:

"omg ashley, i’ve just seen “hannah montana the movie”!! and it’s just as awesome as the tv show only bigger and prettier and she doesn’t fall down so much.

basically hannah the pop star is getting way too cocky for a secret identity so her dad (i wish billy ray cyrus would shave his chin) takes her home to tennessee to remind her her real name is miley stewart (well it’s really miley cyrus but you know what i mean). and she falls in love with this cooool cowboy (i wish we had cowboys in new york!) who wears super tight jeans and has zac efron hair but zac doesn’t play him :( and he likes miley way better than hannah even though hannah’s outfits are really cute (but not trashy like britney or lindsay).

then she paints a henhouse and totally saves her home town from getting a shopping mall (not sure why) by giving a SUPER AWESOME concert with all these new songs about how great it is to climb mountains and then a million people dance. oh, and her dad finds a girlfriend (i know, super gross).

i love hannah sooo much. she’s so CLEAN, you know?.....


So Clean? Alright! (and relax, I did put 'legitimate' in air quotes, above, right?)

Anyway, what follows is a comment sitting atop the thread at the moment.

The first line is unironic in the extreme, but not unexpected:

"I went with my granddaughters to see this movie and it is a great movie....."

But the second line?

Well......

"It is a clean, holsum movie....."

Wow.

Is this really what the NYT wants, from a lady named Pam from the Buckeye State, up on their site, front and center?

I dunno.

But....

Here's what I really don't get.

Which is....

Why don't the geniuses running these things hire (or even enlist, because I'm sure lots of movie freaks would do it for free) a flock of real mods who actually engage commenters in the conversation.

You know, just like what the best of all those 'irresponsible' big-time Bloggers do to really get things cooking on the threads.

Now.

Why might something like this actually matter to the geniuses?

In a 'business model'-type way I mean.

Well, just in case their 'new media consultants', who are probably being paid infinity times infinity (plus one) more than it would cost to hire a thousand flock army of good mods for a year or three, haven't told them.....

It's the quality of the conversation on really good threads, wherein commmentors actually read and respond to what others are saying, that generates all sorts of return hits (ie. it keeps the eyeballs coming back).

And that, of course, results in a thing that Terry O'Reilly calls a marketers' dream, otherwise known as...




OK?


______
And why, you might be asking, am I paying attention to reviews of Miley and BillyRay vehicles? Well, littler e. is 10.....And she's a girl.....And I'm hoping that this one will be better than the Jo-Bro thing we saw at the Googl-O-Plex recently....
And here's something really, really strange.....the review by Ms. Catsoulis was rated a '7o' on Metacritic.com....Go figure....Think my loyalty thing with them just went down a notch or '38'.
Oh, and if anybody has suggestions for truly good multi-level stratification movies for everybody.....Send-em!

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