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The Wikipedia War over Barbenheimer
- lolsal 3y agoIs this really a war? Does this really affect tech or society in any meaningful way?
- gary_0 3y agoIt's silly nerd shenanigans, and I'm fine with a little of that showing up on HN. Although once sites like Kotaku start writing articles about it, the wacky fun has usually run its course.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoFor the real wars (Wikipedia-based ones), see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars For comic relief, start with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles
- swalling 3y agoNo, this was not a war at all by Wikipedia standards. The deletion nomination was closed under an informal Wikipedia guideline called “WP:SNOW”, which is shorthand for saying that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that it was going to result in deletion, because the comments to keep the article were so overwhelming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Barbenheimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
- bjourne 3y agoIt feels like there is some ongoing sophisticated guerrilla marketing campaign to promote these movies. YouTube mysteriously promotes some video about how Oppenheimer was a great physicist, Columns are written about what the Barbie movie has to do with Feminism, and even on Hacker News there are multiple links per day about these two movies. Something is going on here.
- Inityx 3y agoThe movies seem refreshingly original and good, and the subjects are things people care about. All those things you said are also symptoms of legitimate interest. Attributing them to a conspiracy with no other evidence is kind of a reach.
- acomjean 3y agoI don’t think it’s a conspiracy, but it is a movie based on a doll (almost like the ultimate commercial). It’s been done before (transformers) but it feels a little wierd this time.
- rm445 3y agoI've wondered the same thing. It's really hard to distinguish real grass roots from astroturf. It doesn't bother me. It's fine if the contrast between these films has just sparked off people's imaginations. But if there is some clever operation 'seeding' the memes and articles, I hope we get to hear about it some day.
- aschearer 3y agoMaybe there's a guerrilla component to it, but it's been all over the NYT recently... Definitely a full press marketing campaign. And we're falling for it with multiple posts about the films hitting the front page recently.
- V__ 3y agoDoes anyone know of any tools or maybe analysis made by researches gauging guerrilla marketing vs. actual interest (which drives the algo)? Because both seem like very plausible possibilities to me. Or even a combination of both, which reinforce each other.