J. Neil Schulman
@ Agorist.com
@ Agorist.com
The last showing of Alongside Night was Oct. 23, 2014 in Spokane, WA. The movie is not yet available on Blu-Ray, DVD, VOD or streaming. As of now the movie is two-and-a-half months past its last public availability, awaiting general release via wider theatrical and the above-mentioned home-entertainment media later this year.
So how is it that within the last ten days — two-and-a-half months after its last screening — there have been 75 IMDb ratings for the movie, a dozen of them posted in the last 24 hours, 22 of them from non-U.S. users — and 59 — 78.7 — of these votes are the lowest possible rating of 1 out of 10? This gives Alongside Night an IMDb rating of 2.4 out of a possible 10 and gives a false-flag impression that an audience that has seen the movie has rejected it. The intent is an attempt to discourage further distribution by giving potential vendors the impression there’s no market for it.
This trolling of Alongside Night on IMDb is nothing new for the movie’s writer/producer/director — me. It follows from the same action against my previous movie, Lady Magdalene’s, by anonymous attackers with multiple sock-puppet accounts.
I haven’t been subject to lethal terrorism such as the firebombing then shootings at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, but there are Internet-based opponents to my libertarian-themed film-making who have had me in their sights for years and they’re still at work.
I don’t have the resources to penetrate their anonymity and stop them as was done with the cyberattacks on Sony for producing The Interview.
Alongside Night portrays the Dark Net as an asset for free speech and free communications. Is there no one at Anonymous to out these anti-libertarian trolls?
Addendum January 15, 2015:
I wrote to IMDb’s Help Desk:
Spoofed IMDb ratings for Alongside Night (2014)
by – jneil@pulpless.com (5 Jan 2015 12:52:16 PM)
URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1667061/ratings
Alongside Night is not yet in general release and has only had limited screenings via TUGG, the last of which was October 23, 2014. The movie has never been available on DVD or VOD or any streaming service. Yet, in the last week, 56 IMDb ratings have appeared, 41 of them a rating of “1”, and 8 of them from outside the United States where the movie has never been seen.
These IMDb ratings have appeared at the same time trolling of the IMDb message board for Alongside Night has resumed
If IMDb has any interest in making sure its ratings are by individuals who have seen the movie these ratings are clearly from anonymous spoof accounts from trolls who wish to launch a cyberattack on the movie to create an artificially low rating that can be quoted across the Internet.
I request that IMDb investigate the accounts posting these spoofed ratings and remove any rating that can not be linked to a real person.
J. Neil Schulman
Managing Member, Alongside Night LLC
IMDb’s Help Desk responded:
Re: Spoofed IMDb ratings for Alongside Night (2014)
by – IMDb Help Desk (7 Jan 2015 01:52:15 PM)
Thank you for contacting us.
Once we determine that a film has been completed and released (or screened at least once) we allow users to vote on it.
Based on our information, the film has been screened at least once. Therefore we can’t remove or block votes for it.
Please be aware that individual votes have different weight on the user rating, and that our voting system is design to detect attempts to stuff the ballot and adjust the rating accordingly when generating the weighted average for a title.
For more information, please refer to http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?votestopfaq
—-
Regards,The IMDb Help Desk
IMDb has zero interest in honest user ratings for movies. They defend anonymous sock-puppet trolling of their ratings. Nobody interested in accuracy in media should give IMDb’s ratings any credibility whatsoever.
— J. Neil Schulman, January 15, 2015
See my earlier articles here:
January 13, 2015 - 7:34 pm
If one were to believe Christopher Cantwell negative attention beats no attention at all. I believe him.
January 14, 2015 - 10:22 am
A simpler thought: Everyone should see the movie, then go to IMDb and recommend it.
January 16, 2015 - 5:03 am
I never pay attention to Amazon or IMDb star ratings. I’m sure far fewer people do than you imagine.
What influences me is the quality of a review. I am influenced by lengthy, detailed, well-written reviews.
* Lengthy, because shills, pro and con (and there are tons of fake, 5-star reviews on Amazon), are lazy. I’ve seen many one-word reviews, or at most a sentence. Reviews that say “five star” or “good” and nothing more.
* Detailed, as in, able to reference specific elements in a film. Shills will often read the description, and try to sound like they know what the film’s about. I read one shill say, “Parker Posey is a great indie actress.”
Yes, Posey is. But the reviewer said nothing specific about Posey’s performance or character in the film. He obviously saw Posey listed in the credits, and tossed out a generic statement.
* Well-written. Not only because it shows the reviewer’s intelligence, but because it shows that he cared enough to take the time to seek clever turns of phrase, original metaphors, engage in dry humor, etc. Honest reviewers care about their writing.
Shills are too lazy to spend time re-writing and polishing their sentence structures in a lengthy, detailed review.
So I read the long reviews on Amazon and IMDb, and judge the film after I’ve judged the quality of the review.
February 5, 2017 - 12:58 am
http://www.imdb.com/board/announcement
IMDb Message Boards Announcement
IMDb is the world’s most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. As part of our ongoing effort to continually evaluate and enhance the customer experience on IMDb, we have decided to disable IMDb’s message boards on February 20, 2017. This includes the Private Message system. After in-depth discussion and examination, we have concluded that IMDb’s message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide. The decision to retire a long-standing feature was made only after careful consideration and was based on data and traffic.
Increasingly, IMDb customers have migrated to IMDb’s social media accounts as the primary place they choose to post comments and communicate with IMDb’s editors and one another. IMDb’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/imdb) and official Twitter account (https://twitter.com/imdb) have an audience of more than 10 million engaged fans. IMDb also maintains official accounts on Snapchat (https://www.snapchat.com/add/imdblive), Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/imdbofficial/), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/imdb), and Tumblr (http://imdb.tumblr.com/).
Because IMDb’s message boards continue to be utilized by a small but passionate community of IMDb users, we announced our decision to disable our message boards on February 3, 2017 but will leave them open for two additional weeks so that users will have ample time to archive any message board content they’d like to keep for personal use. During this two-week transition period, which concludes on February 19, 2017, IMDb message board users can exchange contact information with any other board users they would like to remain in communication with (since once we shut down the IMDb message boards, users will no longer be able to send personal messages to one another). We regret any disappointment or frustration IMDb message board users may experience as a result of this decision.
IMDb is passionately committed to providing innovative ways for our hundreds of millions of users to engage and communicate with one another. We will continue to enhance our current offerings and launch new features in 2017 and beyond that will help our customers communicate and express themselves in meaningful ways while leveraging emerging technologies and opportunities.