Amazon Answers brings out legions of people who will go to the effort of replying to a question about an item with “I don’t know”, which facinates me. Or telling people what they bough it for someone else so can’t answer.
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I was surprised at some of the shows on the list that were downvoted more by men. I mean, Gilmore Girls? Ok, it has “Girls” in the title, and focuses on a single mom and her teenage daughter but the show itself is just so damn clever I can’t imagine why it would be more hated by men. I think it’s fucking brilliant! Most surprising to me was The Closer – so, it has a female lead, but it’s still a dark comedy crime drama.
I just don’t get it.
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That’s what I thought too, but it turns out that if someone asks a question through the system, what pops up in your email is the option to click on either on ‘answer the question’ or ‘I don’t know’, so people are picking that button as the easier choice.
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The dialogue is very twee and affected. I can see why someone might not enjoy it, but obviously not why someone would rate it a 1 because it ain’t ther thing. Unless it was Netflix where you make a difference for you and your watching and the algorithm for recommendations.
Some time ago I watched a guy with fetal alcohol syndrome surf the web. It was really eye-opening how literally he took it all. Every statement and every question on the page were addressed at him personally. I could absolutely see him giving a polite non-answer when confronted with a question about a product he knows nothing about.
In other news, I also found out who takes those “20 hot singles within 5 miles want to meet you!” banners seriously.
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I don’t like Sex in the City. That doesn’t make me an “angry dude” I just didn’t like it. Same with the Ghostbusters trailer.
This trend towards making female driven properties untouchable to criticism is problematic.
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These are different criteria, indeed. If someone if using a Netflix, or Pandora - style vote that is intended to groom the system in the context of something like IMDB or Amazon that uses those votes as a global recommendation system, something ain’t gonna work well.
And us consumers seldom know which of these system are in use, (or will be switched to in the future).
Years ago when planning to architecture an online personalized rating system, I considered surfacing the difference between “I like this type of stuff” vs “this is pretty good in its class” … but couldn’t figure out the mechanics of using that data.
… And every time I vote down a good song in the office Spotify account, I feel a little guilty because it’s not that it’s a bad song per se, it’s just that I don’t want to hear it in the context of this playlist :-]
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It’s the all-but-complete lack of explosions.
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It seems part of the disparity is that there are many more men than women using the rating system, and another part is that men are more likely to give more extreme ratings. Both are probably explained by social conditioning: Man decisive! Have strong manly opinion!
The article doesn’t imply there’s any kind of organized group sabotaging shows aimed at women, as far as I can tell.
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Angry dudes are downranking woman-oriented TV shows on review sites
Women failing to upvote the TV shows they like, on review sites.
There, fix it for ya’.
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I hardly think women are failing, here. Maybe, “IMDb ratings hugely biased toward male audience”?
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“The 25th-most-male program has 94 percent of its ratings from men. The 25th-most-female show has only 75 percent of its ratings from women.”
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It’s not just men voting more than women, although that clearly is true. It’s also that men are being much more negative towards stuff they don’t like. Might be they’re just keener to use the whole scale when voting, but >15% of men who voted on it gave SatC a rating of 1/10.
That’s not offering a considered opinion, that’s loudly shouting how much you hate this thing that clearly wasn’t aimed at you.
Here’s another example. And another - they really, really hate America’s Next Top Model.
They especially don’t like Real Housewives…, either (although nobody does)
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So when a man doesn’t like something, that counts as sabotage? I don’t think anyone was making that argument about women back when all the feminists had their knickers in a twist over Game of Thrones. Or Asians up in arms over Scarlett Johanssen.
People don’t like what they don’t like and are entitled to say so. All the people, not just some of them.
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So what? Want to change that? Rate some shows yourself.
In 1927. Numerous Netflix reviews complained about her being “too slutty” so I was like “hmm I need to watch THIS!”
(Adds to netflix list…)
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That’s quite an assumption. No; as I said, I think society conditions men more than women to believe that their opinions matter and that their opinions should be strong ones.
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And from all this who the hell cares?
Seriously, I barely go by IMDB or any other movie/show review rating system. I actually read the synopsis, scan through a dozen or so reviews, find the ones that aren’t pure shit, and get a general idea of how much I might like it.
On places I can leave both a review and rating I do so. For something that is highly female oriented I usually have seen it because the wife wanted to, which is fine, but that’s how I frame my review and my rating. I would never have watch Gilmore Girls by myself, but it was a fine show, I’d give it a 6/10.
I mean personally I can’t stand The Notebook, however with a 55/45% male/female voting and at an overall 7.9 with 26.7% of people giving it a 10 it seems popular. Even though I think it’s a horrible story with massive character defects and would give it a 1/10…
Occam’s razor seems to apply here.
Yes, it is possible there is an unfeasibly large number of men who’re forced to watch entire series’ of SatC (et al), and find really it lacking both artistically and technically, and are sufficiently motivated to log on to various web services to share their opinions with the world, AND who - just coincidentally - all rate those shows with the lowest possible score. What? It could happen.
Alternately, there might be a large group of man babies (I believe the collective noun here is “gamergate”, as in “a gamergate of man babies”) who will aggressively shit on anything that women appear to be good at or have the temerity to enjoy, regardless of whether the man babies/'gaters have watched or played said thing, in the hope that said thing will be removed from the cultural scene forthwith. What? It already has happened. Often.
I know which side of the razor I stand on.
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