The problem with IMDb
I need to make a distinction here between conservatives and conservative jerks. I’m not saying all conservatives are jerks — just some subset. I don’t know how big the subset is, but it’s big enough that it’s having a big effect on this very popular website.
I have been using IMDb for a long time to get information on movies and TV shows. It is still useful for finding out things like the stars, director, where it was filmed, and what songs are on the soundtrack. I always check the behind-the-scenes trivia for every show I watch. But it is no longer useful for finding out how good a show is.
Up until a year or two ago, you could rely on the rating in almost all cases. The only exceptions were movies that were immensely popular because of their existence within a series that was beloved. For example, the Star Wars prequels and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. Apart from that you could use the rating to give you a good idea of how good the show was — if it was less than around a 6.2, you could be guaranteed it was bad.
Now the situation is different. At least for current shows — the rating for older shows may still be fine. Conservatives who don’t like it, or imagine that they don’t like it without even watching it, are giving a 1/10 to certain shows. Which shows? Here are some examples:
- Ghosted
- Ana de Armas is the action hero and Chris Evans is the normal guy, the boyfriend. Because of the big stars, I expect more people will watch this and the rating will go up.
- Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World
- This one is pretty obvious — they’ve been told that climate change isn’t real so this must be a bad show.
- It Had to Be You
- What’s wrong with this show? I think it must be the out-of-wedlock sexual activity.
- Run the Burbs
- What’s wrong with this show is that it features an Asian family, and dares to include a gay character. For a TV show, one way to spot this phenomenon is to compare the rating for the show overall with the rating for individual episodes.
There are other shows, like Star Trek: Discovery, that conservatives don’t like but if they tried to do their trick there were just too many fans of the show that gave it a reasonable rating.
One thing they’ll do is put in their 1/10 ratings before the show even comes out. The phenomenon is particularly tragic for smaller shows just coming out that don’t have a big fanbase.
Liberals, in general, have a greater sense of fairness than conservatives. Conservatives tend to think that they know what’s best, not just for themselves but for you. They want other people to live the way that they do, and watch the movies they watch. They don’t understand that someone else’s opinion that’s different might be equally valid.
As for why the people at IMdb haven’t done anything about this, I’m not sure. As one of the most popular websites, I think they have a duty to address it.
You used to be able to see ratings broken down by age category and gender, but they got rid of that — they made it less useful, not more. If a show’s ratings differed between males and females, you can guarantee that the female ratings were more reasonable.