The far right does this with literally everything. They do it with their stupid books. Everything. They all work for billionaires who buy out copies of their media to make them appear more popular than they really are.
I really liked Jim Caviezel, once upon a time. Frequency was a really fun movie, and Person of Interest is literally my favorite TV show of all time, but man.... Man, it sounds like he really sucks. And that's sad.
Back when I was living in Hollywood, I went to see an 11 AM opening day matinee of that John Travolta movie Battlefield Earth based on the book by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The theater was packed and the audience was pumped and I was like “OK, this is gonna be fun.“ But then the movie started and it sucked SO bad and that’s when I realized that everybody but me in the room was a Scientologist, there to boost opening day numbers. It was so bad I left after the first 30 minutes.
I went to see Wild Wild West with a buddy. We were both pretty put off by the film but got our money back when the film broke half way through. My friend was stoked that now he would have that money to see a "good movie". Alas he used his refund to go see Battlefield Earth. We've never let him live it down.
I think it's funny that the handicap seats weren't full. Like even in a fake audience, they don't want to look like they care about people with handicaps
This was driven by the producers/Angel Studios... they have a "pay it forward" thing on their website, originally to buy tickets "because we don't want finances to be the reason smoeone doesn't see this movie" but now it's no longer in theatres, as a way to extract more money from their supporters for "covering the cost to market the film." There's a plea from Jim Caviezel during the credits comparing SoF to Uncle Tom's Cabin and fighting slavery with a URL and QR code to the website... /1
It's a pretty disgusting manipulation of their easily led audience to fleece them of more money... there used to be information on the site about how many people had bought tickets for other people but they took it down when it became obvious that there were a few people buying a large number of tickets and not some organic groundswell of support from a large base. If you have 90 minutes spare, this is a great discussion of the situation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5jkQsHuaWA
I really enjoy Morbid Zoo's essays. She clearly spends a lot of time digging into the subject matter and critically thinking about things, offering a ton of context and additional information.
On a related note, when conservative writers publish a book, bulk purchases make it look like a bestseller. For example, look at 11 and 12 on this list, each has a symbol denoting bulk purchases. https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/hardcover-nonfiction/ Bulk sales often drive them much higher up the list.
Fake "grass roots" support for extreme views. Like PACs buying thousands of copies of the political book du jour so it shows up on the NYT and Amazon "best sellers" lists.
What I find interesting now is that some conservatives who know all to well that the Qanon stuff is distilled bullshit are now trying to say that progressives and liberals are the real Qanon believers.
There was some real weird shit going on with AMC and Angel Films for a hot minute, though it has a conspiracy theory flavor without a huge amount of non-anecdotal evidence. Statistically, the movie performed as an anomaly and trended well outside of expert predictions. At one point it was claiming to be the most successful independent release, ever. This has all the hallmarks of an astroturf campaign that got a little too excited and leaned a little too heavy into its own success.
This practice has been done before, so they can claim "it opened to sold out theaters". Publishing companies do this with books too, to get them on the NYT best seller list.
As far as Bookstores/publishers go, I can ABSOLUTELY confirm this from my time at Barnes and Noble. We would get cases of some shitheel's book and then they go on dosplay, and quite a few cases would get stuck in the backroom until "their time was up" and then either get sent back to the publisher or straight-up tear the covers off and destroy them. Limbaugh and Coulter were the ones I remember from back then...
There’s sales evidence that the turfing ramped up when they were on track to be one of the most successful “indie” releases ever. The buddy-buy ticket thing, for instance, was showing estimates of $15-25m of tickets were bought by someone for a third party under the guise of “get your friend to see this smash hit!”. I think they claimed 80+% of those tickets actually attended, but it stinks of turf plastic and it’s a handy but suspect excuse for empty theaters with no seat availability.
This was a hot topic in film circles when it magically started competing with a Mission Impossible film with fewer theaters than it should’ve needed, and in unpredictably responsive markets in places where it wasn’t expected to connect or wasn’t heavily advertised.
Conspiracy theory here: the owner of the cinema did this so no one will waste time with this movie. Remember the ayr rand cinematic shitshow "who is john galt"? Same thing. Garbage cinematography à la 1984 (or was it farenheit 851?) Mass manipulation
"The Fountainhead" parts one through three. Steve Ditko (of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange fame) and Zack Snyder are major fans (Ditko is no longer with us). Rand's fanbase is extremely culty, and parallels Scientology in many ways. For a "charismatic thought leader" she was decidedly uncharismatic and lacked coherent, mature thought.
For a philosopher in a more advanced society than slavery as commonplace and post Voltaire? She's way behind. Yet webhad to endure that dated bs. Education for the masses, ayn rand is ok for a dystopic video game, and lacks humanity.
Yep, I'm currently reading the wiki article about her, it doesn't have much except her controversies and the like, as Wikipedia has plenty of right wing sabatou* “members” so it's hard to trust that site's unbiased nature.
Several years ago, I came upon a racial slur that replaced the country name of Niger, from a RE5 controversy article, and It was almost a year until they fixed it, so I never fully trusted Wikipedia again!
This is Rebekah Jones of Florida. She was a whistle blower on Ron De Santis and the Covid response. She was bullied, fired, arrested, and had her reputation smeared for trying to call out the lies. Then, she attempted to beat Matt Gaetz and take his seat in congress, but too many Floridians drink the Red Hat Kool-Aid and they denied her efforts. The more you know right?
She went rogue and locked everyone else at the Department of Health out of the COVID dashboard. She was fired for that and making unapproved changes. Anyone would be fired for insubordination. She was arrested because she stole personal information of FDOH employees and logged into the FDENS alert system via her home Comcast address (that's why they got a warrant, the website logs your address...) and sent an email via that alert system to all FDOH employees. The more you know, right?
Two sides to every coin. It is debatable who is lying about this stuff, her or the state, but either way, it is all what happened. She may have gone rogue, she may be full of shit, but she was bullied, fired, arrested, and smeared for the things that transpired. You can believe whichever side you want. As for the congress run, that part just is what it is, unless you think Democrats voted Matt Gaetz in...
This is all factually correct, I remember it... however... she did all that after being pressured to distort the data in a way to make FL look better. She would have been OK if not for that fucking email. She didn't get enough traction telling people, so she broke the law to send it and that's when they had enough to go after her with the cops.
It's not though... just missing a LOT of context. She wrote the COVID dashboard, and the backend for it. They asked her to cook the books to make FL look better. She refused, locked out everyone so they couldn't do it either. The email thing is 100% true, and that's how they were able to come after her and make it legal. This is all just more Ron Desantis bullshit.
I can’t vouch for the other stuff they said but Jones doesn’t seem all that great after she got a 1 year probation for posting nude photos of a dude in his employer’s website as “revenge porn.”
So what's the scam, are people buying tickets and not showing up? Or are the theater companies in on it and just claiming it's full? Are the producers behind it all?
Would the theatre companies actually come out much better? An empty seat doesn't buy popcorn and I hear it's the snacks and drinks that make up a sizeable chunk of the profit.
Same way Trump staged that hug at the fast food chicken place... to make ppl think that right wingers are more popular than they are and worth investing attention into.
Because the theatre companies make their loot at the concession stand, not the box office. And empty seats dont buy $10 boxes of candy an $20 buckets of popcorn.
Honestly there's no way to buy out a release without both the theater and the production company knowing it. You'd have to buy all the tickets in hundreds of theaters each night.
Right, 90 tickets, conservatively two shows per night showing in 200 screens. Start buying tickets at 2A with your team of two dozen temps, being sure not to miss any seats. You'd probably be wrapped by in time for 6 hours of sleep before buying out the next day.
Yeah, they're already buying hundreds of thousands of tickets per night, hiring a larger team of people to do it certainly wouldn't be a foolish way to promote a struggling film.
Same reason carter sold his peanut farm. Presidents are supposed to be divested from private enterprise, but Trump never did and just keep getting more transparent
I don't know if it meets legal criteria but this sure feels allot like money laundering. "Why yes, all this money is from my totally legitimate movie that people definitely saw and not at all from an illegal source I can't show the IRS."
Greymalum
Liars gonna lie.
CatEyebrows
Astroturfing = money laundering
Fargus57
Rotten Tomatoes audience (all) score of 93%. Movie rating fraud warm up for 2024 election fraud. I hate RT.
riderofthepurplesage
So 7% of qtards didn't like it?
HeywouldJablowme
The far right does this with literally everything. They do it with their stupid books. Everything. They all work for billionaires who buy out copies of their media to make them appear more popular than they really are.
OneBabyOneHamburgerBun
Correct way to journalism. If it looks like bullshit, smells like bullshit, go see if it's fucking bullshit before you write about it.
JaXm
I really liked Jim Caviezel, once upon a time. Frequency was a really fun movie, and Person of Interest is literally my favorite TV show of all time, but man.... Man, it sounds like he really sucks. And that's sad.
pilomotor
He played Jesus in Passion of the Christ. Red flag.
FirePrinceZuzu
He played the Count of Monte Cristo in quite possible the worst book to movie adaptation of all time. Relevance? Probably none.
shameofslate
Back when I was living in Hollywood, I went to see an 11 AM opening day matinee of that John Travolta movie Battlefield Earth based on the book by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The theater was packed and the audience was pumped and I was like “OK, this is gonna be fun.“ But then the movie started and it sucked SO bad and that’s when I realized that everybody but me in the room was a Scientologist, there to boost opening day numbers. It was so bad I left after the first 30 minutes.
CyberWizard252
I went to see Wild Wild West with a buddy. We were both pretty put off by the film but got our money back when the film broke half way through. My friend was stoked that now he would have that money to see a "good movie". Alas he used his refund to go see Battlefield Earth. We've never let him live it down.
StarBug
Astroturfing you say?
Fargus57
Probably coupled with healthy doses of money laundering, fraud, and illegal campaign financing.
Nalianna
Yes, 'fake grassroots support'
bbraunImgur
“Last week tonight” did an episode on it n about 2018
Actualmachian2
Pretty ironic getting your astroturfing news from tiktok.
RadioactiveLobster
Anyone else irrationally upset about how she pronounced Oppenheimer?
thisiswhyicanthaveanythingnice
Open hymer
mooreuscg
Yes!
RevolutionOnHerLips
I think it's funny that the handicap seats weren't full. Like even in a fake audience, they don't want to look like they care about people with handicaps
Mayfly10
You might need proof of necessity to buy those seats. If they're booking tickets under fake names they won't have that proof.
KleptoKea
Bit of a shithole country with all this going on
sjhsnz
This was driven by the producers/Angel Studios... they have a "pay it forward" thing on their website, originally to buy tickets "because we don't want finances to be the reason smoeone doesn't see this movie" but now it's no longer in theatres, as a way to extract more money from their supporters for "covering the cost to market the film." There's a plea from Jim Caviezel during the credits comparing SoF to Uncle Tom's Cabin and fighting slavery with a URL and QR code to the website... /1
sjhsnz
It's a pretty disgusting manipulation of their easily led audience to fleece them of more money... there used to be information on the site about how many people had bought tickets for other people but they took it down when it became obvious that there were a few people buying a large number of tickets and not some organic groundswell of support from a large base. If you have 90 minutes spare, this is a great discussion of the situation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5jkQsHuaWA
Cataleast
I really enjoy Morbid Zoo's essays. She clearly spends a lot of time digging into the subject matter and critically thinking about things, offering a ton of context and additional information.
Blakeadelic
On a related note, when conservative writers publish a book, bulk purchases make it look like a bestseller. For example, look at 11 and 12 on this list, each has a symbol denoting bulk purchases. https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/hardcover-nonfiction/ Bulk sales often drive them much higher up the list.
thisiswhyicanthaveanythingnice
This must be an old clip though. There can’t be any theatres showing that film now?
RockKickass
QANON has money?
GuggelPlayer
Not the only movie that has done this
pachyderm
How did it become “astroturfing” ?
SirChadwellHeath
It's like "papering the house" without needing bums to sit on the seats https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-08-08-ca-134-story.html
gumblemuntz
Fake "grass roots" support for extreme views. Like PACs buying thousands of copies of the political book du jour so it shows up on the NYT and Amazon "best sellers" lists.
DidItForScience
What I find interesting now is that some conservatives who know all to well that the Qanon stuff is distilled bullshit are now trying to say that progressives and liberals are the real Qanon believers.
wideshoulderedbeast
You people still use the word handicap???
feryooday
out of curiosity, what do you use?
wideshoulderedbeast
Disability
JustLettingPeopleBeWrong
As a disabled person: sure. Whatever. I don't give a fuck, and I don't think any of the other disabled people I know do either.
Hammertulski
There was some real weird shit going on with AMC and Angel Films for a hot minute, though it has a conspiracy theory flavor without a huge amount of non-anecdotal evidence. Statistically, the movie performed as an anomaly and trended well outside of expert predictions. At one point it was claiming to be the most successful independent release, ever. This has all the hallmarks of an astroturf campaign that got a little too excited and leaned a little too heavy into its own success.
FlyingTigerRose
That's OP-enhy- mer
FlyingTigerRose
(Grrrr! Sorry that looks weird - cat on keyboard. Emphasis on first syllable, that's all.)
TheDudeanator
This practice has been done before, so they can claim "it opened to sold out theaters". Publishing companies do this with books too, to get them on the NYT best seller list.
hogeyegrex
Everything from Regnery publishing.
mygodhasabiggerdick
As far as Bookstores/publishers go, I can ABSOLUTELY confirm this from my time at Barnes and Noble. We would get cases of some shitheel's book and then they go on dosplay, and quite a few cases would get stuck in the backroom until "their time was up" and then either get sent back to the publisher or straight-up tear the covers off and destroy them. Limbaugh and Coulter were the ones I remember from back then...
Hypothesist
Sports stadiums have sellouts that is just ticketmaster buying all the tickets
TheDudeanator
Ticketmaster has scalpers to but all the tickets and resell them at jacked up prices, then they get a cut.
DidItForScience
https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/ticketmaster-cheating-scalpers-726353
https://www.npr.org/2018/09">">https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/ticketmaster-cheating-scalpers-726353
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/20/649666928/ticketmaster-has-its-own-secret-scalping-program-canadian-journalists-report
TheDudeanator
Huzzah! Thank you for links!
Hammertulski
There’s sales evidence that the turfing ramped up when they were on track to be one of the most successful “indie” releases ever. The buddy-buy ticket thing, for instance, was showing estimates of $15-25m of tickets were bought by someone for a third party under the guise of “get your friend to see this smash hit!”. I think they claimed 80+% of those tickets actually attended, but it stinks of turf plastic and it’s a handy but suspect excuse for empty theaters with no seat availability.
Hammertulski
This was a hot topic in film circles when it magically started competing with a Mission Impossible film with fewer theaters than it should’ve needed, and in unpredictably responsive markets in places where it wasn’t expected to connect or wasn’t heavily advertised.
jacblake
Syko73
The "New York Times best selling" book Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard leaps to mind
DaJoW
And all the politicians memoirs.
OhIfIMust
Which explains why I saw so many of his shitty-ass novels in the library when I was a kid; they'd donate them in truckloads.
ThePunishersVengefulBrother
You could not escape the commercials.
huhsaywhatnow
Loney Maundering you say?
WilliamWeird
Movie Laundering, you say?
lpooptoomuch
that would be the dumbest way to launder money, so little of what you put in is coming back.
EccentricNimoy
Isn't it like other movie flops? designed to fail so they can write it off as a loss?
WombBruiser69
Nobody accused them of being smart
W0lfsbl00d
Around half is taken by movie theaters. But it's just as much about optics and them trying to falsely inflate angel studios reputation.
landisfloatingrock
Looney Maundering
Marsupialmessiah
Conspiracy theory here: the owner of the cinema did this so no one will waste time with this movie. Remember the ayr rand cinematic shitshow "who is john galt"? Same thing. Garbage cinematography à la 1984 (or was it farenheit 851?) Mass manipulation
christophersouthworth
"The Fountainhead" parts one through three. Steve Ditko (of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange fame) and Zack Snyder are major fans (Ditko is no longer with us). Rand's fanbase is extremely culty, and parallels Scientology in many ways. For a "charismatic thought leader" she was decidedly uncharismatic and lacked coherent, mature thought.
Marsupialmessiah
For a philosopher in a more advanced society than slavery as commonplace and post Voltaire? She's way behind. Yet webhad to endure that dated bs. Education for the masses, ayn rand is ok for a dystopic video game, and lacks humanity.
freezingpilot
For someone who hated government handouts, she also took a lot of them.
TZO2k15
Whoever she is, she's the hero we need!
thisiswhyicanthaveanythingnice
That’s Rebekah Jones. Look up her name. She has quite a political history in Florida.
tftd
She spent money to support one cult to point at another,lol.
TZO2k15
Yep, I'm currently reading the wiki article about her, it doesn't have much except her controversies and the like, as Wikipedia has plenty of right wing sabatou* “members” so it's hard to trust that site's unbiased nature.
Several years ago, I came upon a racial slur that replaced the country name of Niger, from a RE5 controversy article, and It was almost a year until they fixed it, so I never fully trusted Wikipedia again!
TheResolver
This is Rebekah Jones of Florida. She was a whistle blower on Ron De Santis and the Covid response. She was bullied, fired, arrested, and had her reputation smeared for trying to call out the lies. Then, she attempted to beat Matt Gaetz and take his seat in congress, but too many Floridians drink the Red Hat Kool-Aid and they denied her efforts. The more you know right?
TheJuiceLoosener
In a society experiencing an oversupply of idiots, it's nice to see there are people like Ms. Jones here, who are nobody's fucking fool. Good on her.
PithyCommentBelow
Oh thanks!! I didn’t realize that was her!!
Seminole97
She went rogue and locked everyone else at the Department of Health out of the COVID dashboard. She was fired for that and making unapproved changes. Anyone would be fired for insubordination. She was arrested because she stole personal information of FDOH employees and logged into the FDENS alert system via her home Comcast address (that's why they got a warrant, the website logs your address...) and sent an email via that alert system to all FDOH employees. The more you know, right?
TheResolver
Two sides to every coin. It is debatable who is lying about this stuff, her or the state, but either way, it is all what happened. She may have gone rogue, she may be full of shit, but she was bullied, fired, arrested, and smeared for the things that transpired. You can believe whichever side you want. As for the congress run, that part just is what it is, unless you think Democrats voted Matt Gaetz in...
OhIfIMust
You got some sauce for that?
Columbus43219
This is all factually correct, I remember it... however... she did all that after being pressured to distort the data in a way to make FL look better. She would have been OK if not for that fucking email. She didn't get enough traction telling people, so she broke the law to send it and that's when they had enough to go after her with the cops.
Wolfshead009
Tell me, what flavor of boot polish do you prefer licking? Because every word of that crap you just spewed in pure bullshit.
Gayforbae
I prefer Hubbard's, tastes good on burgers too. But thats just for fun, not propping up fascists like this guy.
16bitStarbuck
Like, fabricated or irrelevant, or both?
Columbus43219
It's not though... just missing a LOT of context. She wrote the COVID dashboard, and the backend for it. They asked her to cook the books to make FL look better. She refused, locked out everyone so they couldn't do it either. The email thing is 100% true, and that's how they were able to come after her and make it legal. This is all just more Ron Desantis bullshit.
sandwiches
I can’t vouch for the other stuff they said but Jones doesn’t seem all that great after she got a 1 year probation for posting nude photos of a dude in his employer’s website as “revenge porn.”
Murmull
I think it might be the type to prefer the yellow snow.
nobodyspecial995
So what's the scam, are people buying tickets and not showing up? Or are the theater companies in on it and just claiming it's full? Are the producers behind it all?
AdrianDunne
Would the theatre companies actually come out much better? An empty seat doesn't buy popcorn and I hear it's the snacks and drinks that make up a sizeable chunk of the profit.
chackstar
There’s no clean up after, so there’s that :D
AdrianDunne
Theatre staff will appreciate that at least.
ElbowDeepInAHeadlessHorseman
Same way Trump staged that hug at the fast food chicken place... to make ppl think that right wingers are more popular than they are and worth investing attention into.
lucivjov
To be fair, why would the theatre company care?
Syko73
Because the theatre companies make their loot at the concession stand, not the box office. And empty seats dont buy $10 boxes of candy an $20 buckets of popcorn.
CoarseAndSalty
Honestly there's no way to buy out a release without both the theater and the production company knowing it. You'd have to buy all the tickets in hundreds of theaters each night.
DarkSock
… And that practice is literally called "astroturfing"
PithyCommentBelow
I mean… it isn’t that hard. You go to the website and buy tickets.
CoarseAndSalty
Right, 90 tickets, conservatively two shows per night showing in 200 screens. Start buying tickets at 2A with your team of two dozen temps, being sure not to miss any seats. You'd probably be wrapped by in time for 6 hours of sleep before buying out the next day.
nobodyspecial995
If they have that kind of money, they can hire more than one person to do it
CoarseAndSalty
Yeah, they're already buying hundreds of thousands of tickets per night, hiring a larger team of people to do it certainly wouldn't be a foolish way to promote a struggling film.
Nalianna
billionaire buys large number of tickets. money goes to republican party, billionaire doesn't have to claim it as a political donation.
IgnisAurumProbat
Just like Trump's bibles. It's a way for churches to funnel money to him without it being a political donation.
HowlingRollercoaster2
Same reason carter sold his peanut farm. Presidents are supposed to be divested from private enterprise, but Trump never did and just keep getting more transparent
LostCaterpillar
I don't know if it meets legal criteria but this sure feels allot like money laundering. "Why yes, all this money is from my totally legitimate movie that people definitely saw and not at all from an illegal source I can't show the IRS."
Nalianna
IRS needs to look into it. As does the FEC.