(TV) Velma (2023) - "Review-Bombed on IMDb & Rotten Tomatoes"
(TV) Velma (2023) - "Review-Bombed on IMDb & Rotten Tomatoes"
Fact checking the agenda benders
Origins
I wanted to do something different. There were a couple of videos in my YouTube feed highlighting some agenda being pushed by various fake and low IQ media outlets. Unrelated, here’s an article from ScreenRant…
As usual with this agenda driven nonsense, no proof of any wrongdoing is offered. Apparently if some garbage ScreenRant likes is disliked by the majority of the population, that’s review bombing. It can’t possibly be that the degenerate tastes of the worst people in society are rejected by the majority of us. That people don’t want their culture erased or their children damaged by these perversions?
No. When reality doesn’t fit your beliefs, create your own reality then tell everyone else they’re wrong. Whatever gets people through their therapy session. So long as they never step out of their safe spaces.
ScreenRant quoted no reviews or performed any in-depth investigations, beyond reading the analytics overview stats of the main IMDB review page. Half-arsed to say the least. I guess they couldn’t provide any supportive evidence, so omitted that which contradicted their agenda. For instance…
“Velma has an 18% audience score, as opposed to its 60% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes”
I guess that’s the audience score from Rotten Tomatoes? Statistics require specificity. Anyone who’s ever had a real job in the creative industries, not simply writing nonsense articles for failing websites, will openly acknowledge the massive corruption with paid reviews.
From over 13 years of working in the video games industry, I can confirm that anything below a 70% is considered a failure. Bonuses usually kick in at 75%. Anything about 85% has the possibility for a franchise. 60% is a sizable failure and hints to me that “critics” weren’t given enough freebies!
“While many already believe that Velma's R-rating is a bad idea, that doesn't account for the absolute slam of incredibly negative reviews that come within only hours of the show's release”
Why doesn’t it? If the show is terrible then the first thing people do is write reviews, so others don’t waste their time watching it. If the same show was bombarded with positive reviews hours after release, does that means it’s bad in backwards world?
There is no logic to this argument. Why would anyone want another R-rated cartoon after South Park, Family Guy, American Dad, Archer, plus all the weeb crap. Kids will watch almost any cartoon that’s on, so target them.
“It wouldn't be the first time a diverse production has been review-bombed due to its diversity”
No show has ever been review bombed due to “diversity”. ScreenRant quotes no shows, but I believe they mean rubbish such as the laughable ‘Star Trek’ reboots. Obviously ‘Willow’ or any anything adapted from a computer game.
These series are disliked by fans because of issues such as Black Dirtying. A process whereby historically accurate white characters are replaced with blacks, usually entirely out of context. There were no black people in the UK during the 1800’s. Having period accurate show predominantly featuring them is a Black Dirtying of history. It’s Nazi levels of brainwashing.
Gender Bending is rampant too. A strong male lead can’t be replaced with a woman in any situation. James Bond, secret agent. He travels the world getting shit done. A woman would not last 5 seconds in a fight against any male counterpart Bond has faced off against. One punch to the face and she’s down. Every time.
Then how is a female supposed to traverse the Middle East by herself? It’s illegal for her to be in public unless accompanied by a man. As soon as her feet touched the ground in Africa she would be brutally beaten and raped for weeks on end, then left to die on the streets. South Africa has an average of 115 rapes per day. Nearly one every 10 minutes and that’s just the ones reported reported. One in 4 blacks in South Africa admitted to committing rape. That’s reality, where are a lot of these shows are based.
There is leeway when dealing with fiction. Lara Croft makes a great heroine, but there’s no delusion that she’s stronger than every man. Women can take on action roles but their physical limitations need balancing through good writing. Wonder Woman is strong because she’s a superhero. Although Gal Gadot, an unathletic tiny anorexic crackhead, was a terrible choice for the part. her body type, again, feeding the delusion that women can defend themselves against men.
“The fact that Velma is being bashed almost exclusively by men also hints at the potentially sexist cause of the bombing”
Or, it’s a cartoon. Scooby Doo, even with its more culturally aware jokes, was aimed at kids. Velma contains paedophilia, drug abuse and R-rated humour. Not for kids.
Scooby Doo is an old IP which will attract older viewers who fondly remember the original 1969 series. Kids today neither know or care about Scooby Doo, let alone Velma. It was popular 50 years ago! This is confirmed on IMDB reviews by age range. Mature people are watching Velma and it disgusts them. So why would they show it to their kids over the old show?
Girls generally grow out of cartoons when hitting their teens, erring towards real world dramas and emotionally driven content. Velma creators made a cartoon for a more mature female audience which doesn’t exist. Being a cartoon, boys will gravitate more towards Velma and review it appropriately. If this were review bombing then why wouldn’t the bombers create accounts as girls?
Marketing fail? Production fail? Writing fail? Once again, this is a case of studios ignoring the fanbase and targeting an audience who don’t care. Creating trash and telling people to like it has never worked before, why would it work now?
User reviews for Velma are dire across the board, from both the public and paid critics. A 60% rated show is not one to watch. On a paid review scale, that 60% is adjusted to be more like a 30% user score. This is much closer to the reality of reviews we’re seeing.
There’s no standardisation across mainstream review sites. Some require a text review posted with a number, others allow just the number. The system is more open for abuse without a required body of text.
This is how the game works:
Good show you like with positive reviews = legitimate
Bad show you hate with negative reviews = legitimate
Good show you like with negative reviews = review bomb
Bad show you hate with positive reviews = review bomb
Let’s take a look at actual reviews. User reviews because they’re the most accurate and the target audience. Critics only care about how positive their bank accounts look.
Metacritic is one of the oldest sites, which means nothing. I’ve personally manipulated the user rating to benefit assigned projects. Don’t read too much in to any of these scores below. They are accurate to a point, though I guarantee there is some manipulation on every site. Both good and bad.
IMDB
Reviews and info correct as of: 15/01/2023 - 21:01
Current Score: 1.7/5 (34%)
Current Number of Text Reviews: 128
XLSX compiled reviews - download
The format of the review may be a little wonky but all the data is there
IMDB seem to publish ratings from both text and number only reviews. I don’t know where the rating only reviews come from as I can only see the text versions. If people can submit a rating only review then this system easily exploitable. IMDB is currently owned by Amazon. Should tell you everything.
There are 6x 10 ratings and 71x 1 ratings. Over 11 times more 1 than 10 score reviews.
Review dates are consistent. There’s no day which had any mass voting, at least we can tell.
No duplicate reviews.
For a show which is hated by the majority, one would assume positive reviews would unlikely be grouped together. It’s a statistics thing. So what does it mean when the first 3 reviews published are 9, 9 and 10 while the remaining are mostly negative? Seems like someone was submitting fake reviews. That could be considered a, failed, review bombing.
Reminder, all reviews are compiled in an XLSX linked at the top of this section. Let’s check some of these, implied, fake reviews…
Line 3 - user ‘nicolasroop’ - 1/10
Note: Comparing it to the original series, heracy!
“The jokes were so juvenile, so heavy handed and the premise so far removed from the original IP, it was embarrassing.”
Line 4 - user ‘zzzxxxcccvvv-43202’ - 1/10
Note: I’m sure there are some Japanese cartoons which are more hate filled
“Imagine taking a kids show and turning it into a disgusting college frat house drama where everyone is a bully and vomiting for laughs. This might be the most hate filled re-interpretation of a cartoon I've ever seen.”
Line 23 - user ‘jxharding’ - 8/10
Note: In what context does it make sense to change 2 of the main white cast to black? Are they now career criminals?
“Existing characters who are now portrayed by someone of a different ethnicity always upsets people, but sometimes, like in this case, the change works and makes sense in the context.”
Line 53 - user ‘sfleuryfacebook’ - 10/10
Note: The token alphabet squad warrior venting
“It's funny and has a fresh tone for adult animation…” - “…I'm not sure why this is getting so many bad reviews besides the reactionary conservatives who can't stand anything that doesn't center straight white men.”
Line 102 - ‘bzmzrd’ - 10/10
Note: Is this a cast member or crew member begging to keep their job?
“FYI this is not a child's show this is an adult humor rated show. HBO max please renew the show trust and believe you have a hit.. also to the haters of the show know this a view is still a view and thank you for the support..”
Rotten Tomatoes
Reviews and info correct as of: 14/012/2023 - 22:24
Current User Score: 7%
Ratings are based on a 5 star system
Current Number of Text Reviews: 871
Possibly 8-9 duplicates or double posters
XLSX compiled reviews - download
The format of the review may be a little wonky but all the data is there
I believe ratings on Rotten Tomatoes require a text review to be submitted. I hate the site, never go there, don’t want to go there and will never make an account. Although this is a better method than IMDB, reviews have been known to disappear without reason.
There are 39x 5 ratings and 665x 0.5 ratings. Over 17 times more 0.5 than 5 score reviews.
Rating dates are consistent, however anything past 24 hours is logged by day and not time. Which isn’t ideal for tracking blocks of reviews.
8 duplicate reviews were found. This is not uncommon with over 800 published, however this may be an internal display problem with the site. Searching for just matching review text, returns 8 duplicates. If I search for duplicates matching all fields (columns), there are none but this may be a local data issues. I perform some crazy magic to convert everything in to a readable format and Excel may be struggling to keep up.
There are so many oddities with the returned data that I’m not confident whoever coded this site ever tested it. For instance, line 23 and 43 have the same username but different profile addresses. Inspecting the addresses reveals the names are different, so they are unique profiles. That’s why I included address URL’s; for verification. I’m more of a professional than writers of clickbait articles.
More of a concern is the 9 duplicate account URL’s found. Users shouldn’t be able to post more than 1 review. For example, Line 22 and 42 are identical.
I have a theory for both of these duplication issues. Line numbers for the last duplicate are 22 and 42, exactly 20 apart. Rotten Tomatoes displays 20 reviews per page. The site is live and as my mad skills are tearing through it, other people may be submitting reviews. As they add them, reviews are pushed down the queue and my script accidentally reads duplicates.
This issue with duplicate reviews appearing on consecutive pages may be why, stupid, people proudly announce they see review bombings from the same account! Perhaps they should read everything instead of what they want to see.
However, that doesn’t fully explain the duplicate usernames with mismatched account URL’s. It’s not my site and not my problem. I can only work with data that’s there. I’m happy to admit there may be 9 duplicate reviews from my records, though not related to user manipulation. It’s a bad script I need to add some intelligence to if I ever run it again. Or I could remove the duplicates with Excel VBA. Yeah, that’s way easier.
Rotten Tomatoes has issues. It also has the best reviews, which is likely why they get removed. Humour ist verboten.
Line 31 - user ‘Kevyn F’ - 0.5
Note: Yep
“Author's self introduction.”
Line 32 - user ‘Enrique M’ - 0.5
Note: Not a paid for review
“It's a fucking piece of shit”
Line 59 - user ‘Haidan W’ - 0.5
Note: Legitimate and to the point
“Bad humor, and it has nothing to do with the Scooby Doo's franchise.”
Line 237 - user ‘Alexis’ - 5
Note: Fake reviews and bots tend to use emojis, you see them all over YouTube
“So far I think the show is the perfect adult spin off I've been excited for for years. It's so funny, I love the animation style and it's pretty psychedelic! 10000/10🙌🙌”
Line 277 - user ‘Michelle H’ - 5
Note: See, this is the next 5 star review
…“MINDY if you read reviews please keep creating awesome shows so far I love them all 🥰”
Line 399 - user ‘Jonathan C’ - 0.5
Note: Criticising the creative work of a women! Must be a mysogo-racist white male!
“Who writes this stuff? It feels like it was written by 6th graders.”
Line 786 - user ‘Victor H M’ - 1
Note: Seems like a good one to end on. Definitely a review bomber, obviously
“She's not Velma, they just made a very weird serie using the scooby-doo universe. Who had this stupid ideia? Changing the characters that everyone knows without any propouse on story”
Bonus Mode - Metacritic
Reviews and info correct as of: 15/012/2023 - 16:17
Current User Score: 0.4/10 (4%)
Current Number of Text Reviews: 147
XLSX compiled reviews - download
The format of the review may be a little wonky but all the data is there
Metacritic reviews must be submitted with a text body, just like with Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a safer method of reviewing as we can more easily find duplicate reviews. Assuming the “review bombers” are lazy and copy-pasting everything.
Reviews on this site have a tendency to randomly disappear for literally no reason. From my experience, they don’t contain anything bad so the reason can’t be content related. It’s either bot protection or rating manipulation. No inference.
The Metacritic scores are within a plausible range of the Rotten Tomatoes scores. I would expect to see a larger discrepancy if there were any manipulation taking place.
There are 2x 10 ratings and 62x 0 ratings. 31 times more 0 than 10 score reviews.
Rating dates are consistent. There’s no day which had any mass voting, at least from the data available.
No duplicate reviews.
Let’s dive in…
Line 1 - user ‘arostislavna’ - 0
Note: I think that’s enough
“Racist film, race-swapping characters, out of date crap-tier jokes, and woke/LGBT propaganda.. This is devolution.”
Conclusion
With the data available, there’s no manipulation which stands out. Obviously the sites that allow users to vote without posting text reviews are open to mass exploitation. Whether it’s happened here is unknown because the data is unavailable. To figure it out we would need the likes of account details and IP addresses. That’s not going to happen.
We have to trust that these sites are actively addressing bots. Not throw a tantrum when a show only we like gets down voted, while shows we hate get up voted. Opinions are not facts. People are allowed to like and dislike things for any reason they want.
Review bombing = bullshit excuse for delivering a crap product.