A fandom example of Paid Comment Spam?
The phenomenon of paid comment spammers, who pose as Real Live Commenters with more or less success to leave "cleverly" camouflaged advertising in blogs, recently came up again at ML, and by a curious coincidence I dowsed up a probable instance of it going on in the wild, concerning the movie (which I didn't know was being made) of Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising, which sounds by all accounts and the online trailer like it's going to be perfectly wretched.
I mean, it's remotely possible that a movie made "based on" [sic] a classic award-winning book in which the scriptwriters toss out (with open disdain) pretty much everything in it and add in a whole bunch of things that weren't there, and change what elements remain almost beyond recognition, might actually turn out to be pretty good as a movie. But it would be one of those One In A Million Longshot Chances, and the Green-eyed Lady blowing pretty hard on the dice, I think.
And this dubious view is shared by most fannish commenters who have heard about the changes, whether fans of the series or not, see Kalinara here on general Plausibility issues. But the interesting thing w/r/t the comment-farming is how a certain "nick" showed up on several blogs out of nowhere to give a generic boost to the movie, someone with no blog or site of his own and no recognition as a regular anywhere...
at WandsandWorlds.com
while JL Bell at Oz and Ends had a similar experience after posting about the problem potential in the film.
So the big question is, not will it be as bad as, or worse than, the movie Eragon, but rather:
Do they really think we're dumb enough that a generic plug from some random person is going to outweigh the reasoned opinions of other fans - or our own judgments based on the primary source materials of producer/director/actor interviews?
Again, what was that about the infallible wisdom of the Free Market?
I mean, it's remotely possible that a movie made "based on" [sic] a classic award-winning book in which the scriptwriters toss out (with open disdain) pretty much everything in it and add in a whole bunch of things that weren't there, and change what elements remain almost beyond recognition, might actually turn out to be pretty good as a movie. But it would be one of those One In A Million Longshot Chances, and the Green-eyed Lady blowing pretty hard on the dice, I think.
And this dubious view is shared by most fannish commenters who have heard about the changes, whether fans of the series or not, see Kalinara here on general Plausibility issues. But the interesting thing w/r/t the comment-farming is how a certain "nick" showed up on several blogs out of nowhere to give a generic boost to the movie, someone with no blog or site of his own and no recognition as a regular anywhere...
at WandsandWorlds.com
while JL Bell at Oz and Ends had a similar experience after posting about the problem potential in the film.
So the big question is, not will it be as bad as, or worse than, the movie Eragon, but rather:
Do they really think we're dumb enough that a generic plug from some random person is going to outweigh the reasoned opinions of other fans - or our own judgments based on the primary source materials of producer/director/actor interviews?
Again, what was that about the infallible wisdom of the Free Market?