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‘Ghostbusters’ Is a Perfect Example of How Internet Movie Ratings Are Broken

16 points by duck 10y ago

minimaxir 10y ago
Granted, a big problem with this approach is that IMDb ratings are skewed (for movies anyways) and follow a strict 4 point scale from 5-8 rating (http://minimaxir.com/img/movie-revenue-ratings/box-office-rating-5.png http://minimaxir.com/img/movie-revenue-ratings/box-office-ra...) so it's hard to gauge the relative impact of the Ratings difference. Also IMDb is prone to brigading, which may indicate that the reviews are not necessarily neutral. What would be interesting is comparing the differences in ratings between genders of the Rotten Tomatoes critics, although that data is not easy to obtain. (That data is not in the dataset I used for that chart)
adamnemecek 10y ago
I fail to see why their views are not as valid as anyone's.
- dublinben 10y ago
  "Their views", as in the opinions of men who are upset about a female-driven reboot? Most importantly, they haven't seen the movie yet, so any 'review' is completely worthless.
  - J_Darnley 10y ago
    The women (or femininsts) are just as guilty for rating the movie without seeing it first: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings?ref_=ttcrv_ql_4 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings?ref_=ttcrv_ql_4 [EDIT] I think I really meant to use this link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings-female http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings-female
dharmon 10y ago
If you regularly watch movies at all, you are far better off spending a few hours calibrating by reading real reviews of movies you actually saw. You then can find 2-3 reviewers who match your tastes (pick a few cause nobody will match exactly). Then skip the stupid point systems and go straight to, ya know, actually reading reviews. As Ebert said, if a reviewer did their job, you should be able to tell if you'd like the movie or not, independent of whether or not the reviewer liked it.
- tracker1 10y ago
  Have to agree.. this is part of the reason that Netflix's algorithm can do so well... It would be cool if Netflix would expand their star system to movies that aren't on video yet, so that people can star the in the theaters movies.
  - yoasif_ 10y ago
    You could try Movielens: http://movielens.org http://movielens.org
colemickens 10y ago
It's really something to watch how absolutely angry men on reddit are about Ghostbusters. It's kind of beyond words for me how incredibly childish and petty it makes them appear, while simultaneously giving fuel to the notion that there is a surge of misogyny in reaction to things labeled as "feminism", as if a female-reboot of Ghostbusters ought to be deemed an act of 'feminism'. Kind of similar to the backlash of outright racism on reddit that happens everytime the nation has to talk about racial issues as the result of yet more violence against or involving minorities. It's like, maybe if you weren't screeching about and denigrating feminism and anti-racism efforts... people wouldn't perceive you as being anti-woman and anti-minority. Sorry, probably a bit political, but it's more or less the phenomena that the article is actually tip-toeing around. (And yes, there have been campaigns organized on reddit to astroturf Ghostbuster ratings.)
- Torgo 10y ago
  It is impossible to separate out however, how the movie was marketed and how people that rely on controversy for attention have fueled this fire. For instance, a reasonable human being would agree that you might just not like the new Ghostbusters. I saw a Twitter exchange with Devin Faraci saying, no, in fact if you don't like it you hate women. Full stop. When asked why that would be so, he replied "I don't know why you're a misogynist, probably because girls don't like you." Even he doesn't really believe that. But he makes his money by stirring shit and getting attention for himself. This is the classic definition of "Internet Troll." It feeds right in to the other side wanting to believe that, basically, exactly what he said. This movie is in part so incredibly polarizing because a bunch of bottom feeders benefit from making it as polarizing as possible (this includes at least some of the people doing marketing for the film itself.) It is horrifying to think that advertising of the future is going to be based around sowing social dissolution in such an obvious way.
- tracker1 10y ago
  I'm not sure what the opposite of misogyny would be called, I'm not particularly upset about the reboot, or the mostly female cast... I'm a bit upset about the role of Chris Hemsworth in the new movie, which is very different and sexist compared to the role that Annie Potts played. At least that's how it comes across in the previews that I've seen. It's pretty obvious sexism, and the same people who would pan this type of sexism with reversed roles are in favor of it here. It's hypocritical. Personally, I'll probably see the movie anyway, just find that bit of hypocrisy irritating, especially since it's a pretty obvious skew from the original character with the female role.
whack 10y ago
The portion I found most interesting, and best illustrates their point: "Here are a few stats I collected early Thursday for the new “Ghostbusters” movie: IMDb average user rating: 4.1 out of 10, of 12,921 reviewers IMDb average user rating among men: 3.6 out of 10, of 7,547 reviewers IMDb average user rating among women: 7.7 out of 10, of 1,564 reviewers The movie isn’t even out in theaters as I’m writing this, but over 12,000 people have made their judgment. Male reviewers outnumber female reviewers nearly 5 to 1 and rate “Ghostbusters” 4 points lower, on average." And from its related article: "“Sex and the City” has seven Emmys and a suite of Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild awards... Any reasonable person should concede that “Sex and the City” was an above-average television program ... “Sex and the City” has an overall rating of 7.0 ... the average score ... is 7.3. So why did a show roundly considered seminal in the now ubiquitous genre of driven-New York-women-make-a-go-of-it programming score so low? Yeah, it’s men. Nearly 60 percent of the people who rated “Sex and the City” ... are women, and looking only at those scores, the show has an 8.1 ... Male users, though, who made up just over 40 percent of “Sex and the City” raters, assigned it, on average, a 5.8 rating." We like to think of these aggregated ratings, as some objective measure of crowd-sourced wisdom. But in reality, it's just an aggregation of thousands of people's personal preferences and biases. If you're someone whose tastes line up with the average critic/online-commenter, the aggregated ratings will sound pretty accurate to you. If you're someone who differs from the average critic/online-commenter, you'll be left wondering why all your favorite shows are rated so poorly. There's probably a moral in here somewhere regarding top-rated posts/comments on HN.

16 points by duck 10y ago

Granted, a big problem with this approach is that IMDb ratings are skewed (for movies anyways) and follow a strict 4 point scale from 5-8 rating (http://minimaxir.com/img/movie-revenue-ratings/box-office-rating-5.png http://minimaxir.com/img/movie-revenue-ratings/box-office-ra...) so it's hard to gauge the relative impact of the Ratings difference. Also IMDb is prone to brigading, which may indicate that the reviews are not necessarily neutral. What would be interesting is comparing the differences in ratings between genders of the Rotten Tomatoes critics, although that data is not easy to obtain. (That data is not in the dataset I used for that chart)

adamnemecek 10y ago

I fail to see why their views are not as valid as anyone's.

dublinben 10y ago
"Their views", as in the opinions of men who are upset about a female-driven reboot? Most importantly, they haven't seen the movie yet, so any 'review' is completely worthless.
- J_Darnley 10y ago
  The women (or femininsts) are just as guilty for rating the movie without seeing it first: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings?ref_=ttcrv_ql_4 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings?ref_=ttcrv_ql_4 [EDIT] I think I really meant to use this link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings-female http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings-female

dharmon 10y ago

If you regularly watch movies at all, you are far better off spending a few hours calibrating by reading real reviews of movies you actually saw. You then can find 2-3 reviewers who match your tastes (pick a few cause nobody will match exactly). Then skip the stupid point systems and go straight to, ya know, actually reading reviews. As Ebert said, if a reviewer did their job, you should be able to tell if you'd like the movie or not, independent of whether or not the reviewer liked it.

tracker1 10y ago
Have to agree.. this is part of the reason that Netflix's algorithm can do so well... It would be cool if Netflix would expand their star system to movies that aren't on video yet, so that people can star the in the theaters movies.
- yoasif_ 10y ago
  You could try Movielens: http://movielens.org http://movielens.org

colemickens 10y ago

It's really something to watch how absolutely angry men on reddit are about Ghostbusters. It's kind of beyond words for me how incredibly childish and petty it makes them appear, while simultaneously giving fuel to the notion that there is a surge of misogyny in reaction to things labeled as "feminism", as if a female-reboot of Ghostbusters ought to be deemed an act of 'feminism'. Kind of similar to the backlash of outright racism on reddit that happens everytime the nation has to talk about racial issues as the result of yet more violence against or involving minorities. It's like, maybe if you weren't screeching about and denigrating feminism and anti-racism efforts... people wouldn't perceive you as being anti-woman and anti-minority. Sorry, probably a bit political, but it's more or less the phenomena that the article is actually tip-toeing around. (And yes, there have been campaigns organized on reddit to astroturf Ghostbuster ratings.)

Torgo 10y ago
It is impossible to separate out however, how the movie was marketed and how people that rely on controversy for attention have fueled this fire. For instance, a reasonable human being would agree that you might just not like the new Ghostbusters. I saw a Twitter exchange with Devin Faraci saying, no, in fact if you don't like it you hate women. Full stop. When asked why that would be so, he replied "I don't know why you're a misogynist, probably because girls don't like you." Even he doesn't really believe that. But he makes his money by stirring shit and getting attention for himself. This is the classic definition of "Internet Troll." It feeds right in to the other side wanting to believe that, basically, exactly what he said. This movie is in part so incredibly polarizing because a bunch of bottom feeders benefit from making it as polarizing as possible (this includes at least some of the people doing marketing for the film itself.) It is horrifying to think that advertising of the future is going to be based around sowing social dissolution in such an obvious way.
tracker1 10y ago
I'm not sure what the opposite of misogyny would be called, I'm not particularly upset about the reboot, or the mostly female cast... I'm a bit upset about the role of Chris Hemsworth in the new movie, which is very different and sexist compared to the role that Annie Potts played. At least that's how it comes across in the previews that I've seen. It's pretty obvious sexism, and the same people who would pan this type of sexism with reversed roles are in favor of it here. It's hypocritical. Personally, I'll probably see the movie anyway, just find that bit of hypocrisy irritating, especially since it's a pretty obvious skew from the original character with the female role.

whack 10y ago

The portion I found most interesting, and best illustrates their point: "Here are a few stats I collected early Thursday for the new “Ghostbusters” movie: IMDb average user rating: 4.1 out of 10, of 12,921 reviewers IMDb average user rating among men: 3.6 out of 10, of 7,547 reviewers IMDb average user rating among women: 7.7 out of 10, of 1,564 reviewers The movie isn’t even out in theaters as I’m writing this, but over 12,000 people have made their judgment. Male reviewers outnumber female reviewers nearly 5 to 1 and rate “Ghostbusters” 4 points lower, on average." And from its related article: "“Sex and the City” has seven Emmys and a suite of Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild awards... Any reasonable person should concede that “Sex and the City” was an above-average television program ... “Sex and the City” has an overall rating of 7.0 ... the average score ... is 7.3. So why did a show roundly considered seminal in the now ubiquitous genre of driven-New York-women-make-a-go-of-it programming score so low? Yeah, it’s men. Nearly 60 percent of the people who rated “Sex and the City” ... are women, and looking only at those scores, the show has an 8.1 ... Male users, though, who made up just over 40 percent of “Sex and the City” raters, assigned it, on average, a 5.8 rating." We like to think of these aggregated ratings, as some objective measure of crowd-sourced wisdom. But in reality, it's just an aggregation of thousands of people's personal preferences and biases. If you're someone whose tastes line up with the average critic/online-commenter, the aggregated ratings will sound pretty accurate to you. If you're someone who differs from the average critic/online-commenter, you'll be left wondering why all your favorite shows are rated so poorly. There's probably a moral in here somewhere regarding top-rated posts/comments on HN.