Turd Polishing Vs. Honesty

Do you even lie, breh?

When it comes to covering movies, or any form of entertainment for that matter, what are the benefits of polishing a turd and what are the pitfalls of sticking a warning sign up beside it, ‘turd!’?  Perhaps an even better question, invert the two, what are the pitfalls of turd polishing, what are the benefits of going against the grain?  This site is way beyond the mainstream, but I already feel very familiar with these questions and even at this lowly level have noticed one thing – doors open when you close your mouth, doors close when you open your mouth.

Bribery exists.

Years ago when I was bigger into gaming, there was an old and persistent rumour that IGN would ‘buffer’ reviews of games, based on who the developer was, or more accurately, how big the developer was.  In other words they allegedly would up the score of a game by around 10% or more.  At the time I thought it was probably just conspiracy theorism, now I’m not so sure.

The bribes mind you, for sites that do engage in that kind of thing, are not blatant brown envelopes or anything like that.  Instead they are the biggest games coming through earlier for you than anyone else.  There’s an ‘understanding’.  And early reviews matter, people want an assessment of quality as soon as possible, especially before the release date.  Often it’s not just the latest games they receive early but outright SWAG, like crates of Doritos, since the publishers have a partnership with beverage companies and such.

This is the same with movies.  Running a movie site?  Getting reasonable or even minimal traffic?  You’re in with a shot of receiving the latest movies for free, so long as you ‘understand’ what is expected of you.  And you’ll get them before anyone else, usually a disc in a plastic pouch, but often the real deal – special editions and what not in their retail packaging, way out ahead of anyone else.  Early screenings are also up there, where stars and directors are often obliged to show up and endure the same shitty question 50 times over.

If you play your cards right, you’ll eventually climb the snake ladder.  And by playing your cards right, I mean polishing the turd.  You see a big movie coming up, you sense or even know that it’s going to be shit, yet you join in the chorus of hysteria give the film undue praise.  If you’ve been doing this long enough, you can even expect set visits followed a few months later by pre-screenings, followed by an advanced copy of the home release, probably even with SWAG and other junk.

There are other more outright examples of blatant manipulation.  The studios are at times in outright cahoots with bald-faced manipulation with certain willing websites.  I know this to be a fact and let me tell you, if it’s bad on my pissant end of the scale, who knows what it’s like at the top of the food chain.  Oh, and comment shilling?  On social media?  It’s there.  They do it.  I’ve seen it, my proof is this website, the comments section last year to be exact.  But I’m going to leave it at that.

There are more benefits still for toeing the party line.  For example, that pre-screening you scored as a result of kissing ass will mean you get an early review up, which can lead to in-roads on corrupt sites like RottenTomatoes, where for certain movies, early examples of turd polishing will be cherry picked up and thrown to the front.  Late or even on-time examples of honesty will be ignored.  After all, the first two weeks of a movie are when it draws most money.  And sites like RottenTomatoes can open more doors still. If you really cast the net out, you can even score a partnership on YouTube, where you’ll be exempt from copyright claims with big trailers and such – but you gotta slap backs, nudge and wink.  Up your review score, hell, get bold, ‘buffer’ your honest feelings by 40%.  A lot of big sites do.  Print magazines go even further still, since their magazines hit the shelves late.

It all depends on how much ass you kiss.

Likewise, every film will have a legion of fanboys and hype monkeys.  If the movie is clearly going to be shit, they don’t want to hear it.  But they’ll listen if you give them something to jerk off to.  They’ll show up alright, so long as you feed their delusions.  Hype for big movies is a big deal for certain people, many enjoy the build up as much as the movie.  And they damned sure don’t want someone being a stick in a mud by telling them they’re about to get ripped off.  There are also fanboy sites, devoted to certain brands or actors. studios love these boys and they love them back, so long as it feeds their cultist mania.  Good luck finding a negative review relative to the subject on those, but keep an eye out for their set report for the upcoming sequel.

The Other Side

Alright, so we’ve covered and broke down the art of selling out.  If you’re clever, even all these years into the internet where domains from the ’90s are king, you can get that sack of goodies,  just as long as you come on in for the big win.  But what happens if your policy is telling it like it is? You will end up on the wrong side of officialdom and doors will close, re: all of the goodies outlined above.  The simple equation is that the more lenient you are, the more official emails you’re going to get.  The more honest you are, the less so.

The flip side is that honesty has its own sales pitch.  People don’t like being patronised and they don’t like being ripped off.  The upside in telling it like it is is that you’ll get less formal emails and invitations but instead more direct emails from the grass roots.  I can’t tell you how many messages of support comes through encouraging our way of doing things and our attempts to keep oldschool movies catering to the male demographic (yes, we still exist for fuck’s sake) at the fore.  Not to mention tips and updates from people who are equals as fans and occasionally, insider information or leaked material.  The ethos of this site is to shun political correctness, to give ’em both barrels.  If it wasn’t  and we were just another hype factory, I don’t think we would’ve made it six months.

Such a thing is not a studio-friendly way to do things, but on the other hand, our traffic is growing.  Last weekend we had a free ‘stress test’ on the site as we had more visitors in a single 24 hour period than we’ve had since I first registered the URL.  All of that is owed to the site staying independent and ‘by the fans’, less professional and more of a hobby.  The fact is that for every person who likes being lied to, there is another who doesn’t.  Traffic can go both ways.

I don’t intend to change that with ManlyMovie.  Most of all because it would be boring.  No money is earned from this site – there are only three ads to cover server and security costs.  So it would also be pointless.  Will the site forever be maligned for not kissing the ring?  Probably.

But I don’t give a fuck, and we’re not going away.  We’re growing and getting louder.