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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Friday, April 5, 2002
11:03 - 4/1 is just the kickoff...
http://www.somethingawful.com/truthmedia/lordoftherings/index.htm

(top) link
Okay-- go read this review of Lord of the Rings, the movie. Go on-- I need you to read if first, before you come back here and continue reading this post. In the words of Glenn Reynolds, I'll wait.








Okay. Now, depending on your intelligence and/or level of rabidity, you've either been made furious -- and fired off an indignant e-mail to the review's author-- or unearthed the real story. See, this "review" is part of "Truth Media", a new segment of SomethingAwful.com, whose not-very-well-hidden mission statement and index page reveals the scheme: specifically to entrap people with an overzealous sense of loyalty to a movie, band, whatever. Their goal is to bait people into flaming the authors of the reviews, so they can post the hate-mail gleefully on their site. And frankly they'd deserve it, too.

Most of the authors have not even seen the movies, heard the music CDs, or used the software reviewed; we simply leaf through various online reviews and summarize them while creating grevious typos, factual errors, and outright fallacies in an attempt to shatter the fragile little worlds of people who associate their entire personality and sense of being with a random form of capitalistic media. We plan on continuing to do this until America realizes that we're not defined by the music, movies, and products we buy... so basically, this section will go on for infinity or possibly longer.

Heaven help us if they do one on The Lion King. Or about Macs.

Seriously, it's a cool, novel idea. My only objection is that it's a bit too obvious. My reaction, while reading it, was "Y'know, for a parody of a review, this is very confused." After finishing it, I went directly to the links at the top which led to the TruthMedia home page-- because when I read something like this, something this obviously warped, I know there's more to the story. Most review organizations have their own predilections informing their analyses-- the CAP Reports, after all, have a certain slant that's pretty hard to ignore but makes sense within the context of their mission. (Well, sort of.) So the trouble with the Truth Media reviews is that even when loaded as a direct, independent URL, they're still surrounded by all the SomethingAwful links and flanked at the top and bottom by those rather obvious links to the page that defuses and debunks the whole scam. Seems to me that if they're serious, they should make an independent site for Truth Media, and go all-out with the hiding of the giveaway. Unless, of course, they're worried that even intelligent people will be unable to find it, and rather than sending entertaining flames, will come away with the impression that the site is simply very stupid. Somehow I get the feeling that SA really, secretly, deep down, has more respect for its readership-- and more desire to be treated as intelligent thereby-- than that. Hey, they're only human.

Marcus was baiting me into blogging this LotR review from the indignant "Hey! This is terrible!" angle, and for that I will someday make him pay. But meanwhile, I wish luck to SA, and I'll be checking back later to see who they do snare.

Oh, and look, more Photoshop Friday fun. I really need to remember to follow SA more regularly...

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© Brian Tiemann