Tuesday, August 30, 2011

User comments are often very dumb

Netflix, Amazon, imdb.com

Turning on the old day time talk show, there would occasionally be something on there...

There was a comic book about the Jeffrey Dahmer case. Families of Dahmer's victims were offended by it, naturally, but everyone there in the studio audience, everyone on the show, had the idea that comic books were intended only for children. They heard "comic book" and they imagined this on the rack next to Heckle and Jeckle and Scrooge McDuck comics.

They did a show on a company selling trading cards. They printed up serial killer trading cards. They were sold at specialty stores, and they kept explaining that. But, apparently, everyone in the audience imagined that they were selling these at candy counters as bubble gum cards.

And, finally, there was The Faces of Death, the profoundly offensive "documentary" showing archival footage as well as fake footage of people dying.

I had some friends who rented one of those movies on videotape. I watched a few minutes of it and left. The guy who insisted on renting it changed his mind about watching it, but two guys who later turned out to have some serious mental problems kept watching.

One thing I thought was strange. They showed a scene which they claimed was filmed by a news crew of a man setting himself on fire to protest nuclear energy. I thought it was strange that there was a reaction shot---the camera man apparently stopped filming a man on fire to get a shot of the crowd reacting to his being on fire. I was also impressed with how quickly men in security guard uniforms rushed in with fire extinguishers.

That footage was obviously fake.

There was other stuff that was apparently real, and a lot that I would assume was fake. The whole thing was profoundly offensive in any case.

They were discussing this "documentary" on The Phil Donahue Show because a disturbed 13-year-old repeatedly watched it before murdering another child.

People were right to be repulsed and disgusted by the movie and it likely played a role in the child's murder, but I bring it up here because the audience seemed to think this video was a product of "Hollywood", that this was produced by the mainstream movie industry. They couldn't distinguish a movie produced by a movie studio from one pieced together by some scumbag with access to an editing room.

"It's a movie, ain't it?"

In a way, it's similar to the user comments and reviews on Netflix, imdb, and Amazon. These people seem to have no idea what they're looking at. If it's on DVD, they assume it's the product of a major studio then they're bewildered and angry when it's not what they expected.

Look at amateur reviews of extreme low budget movies, any art film, any underground movie, any foriegn film, anything remotely avant garde. Anything that's not complete crap.

I heard that idiots kept returning The Blair Witch Project to video stores complaining that it was filmed on videotape and black & white film.

I've thought for a long time that mediocrity is the ideal. Just give them what they expect and make them happy.

Faces of Death vs. Jenny Jones

Well, this horrible series, The Faces of Death seemed to be partly responsible for one murder of a child. Jenny Jones, the daytime talk show host who was attacking the long-haired wretch who produced the disgusting Jeffrey Dahmer comic book, was more directly responsible for one murder. A young man named Jonathan Schmitz was humiliated on her show. He had a history of mental illness. He shot and killed the gay guy who he felt humiliated him on the show.

That puts Jenny Jones on par with Nancy Grace who was responsible for one suicide. She lured a young mother named Melinda Duckett onto her show then badgered and attacked her, accusing her of being responsible for her own child's disappearance. Police had never considered the woman a suspect in the disappearance of her 2-year-old son. But Grace badgered and abused her, essentially accusing her of murdering her own child. She committed suicide before the show was aired the next day. The scum at CNN then allowed Grace to use to her show for the next several days to justify her conduct by continuing to attack the dead girl.

Nancy Grace claims that she hates crime because her fiancé was killed. But I'd say the guy really dodged a bullet when his co-worker shot him. Imagine being married to Nancy Grace.

Grace, by the way, wrote a book in which she lied repeatedly about her alleged fiancé's death. She claimed he was killed by a stranger when he was killed by a co-worker, she claimed that the killer refused to speak to police when he actually confessed almost immediately. She claimed that the jury deliberated for days when it actually took a couple of hours and she falsely claimed that he repeatedly appealed his conviction---he never appealed.

How did she get all this wrong? Did she even know the victim? Did she pick a random murder victim she saw in the paper and claim he was her boyfriend to hide the fact that no man would ever want her?

Nancy Grace is now married. Sadly, she has children, twins. They were born 7 months after her wedding, which is why she lied about their date of birth. My guess is that they'll end up just like "Dr Laura's" sick bastard son.

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