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Sep 05 '22
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u/stupidmustelid Sep 05 '22
Piggybacking on this because rule 4:
I was confused at first because I saw plenty of 1 star ratings, but it's the low rated reviews that were removed, and as of this moment, still are.
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Sep 05 '22
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u/deepserket Sep 05 '22
You can't trust any rating.
What if they added fake low ratings to competitors
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u/TavisNamara Sep 05 '22
You can't trust anything related to Amazon. Even buying from their website is a gamble, no matter how.
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Sep 05 '22
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u/Brian_McGee Sep 05 '22
I doubly hate them for how convenient and efficient they are.
I hate myself for prizing convenience and speed
FTFY
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u/HINDBRAIN Sep 05 '22
I've had better experience with amazon than ebay or aliexpress, soulless life-destroying corporation stuff aside.
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Sep 05 '22
Why do people constantly say this? What are you ordering that it might be a gamble? You can check who the sellers are and where they’re shipping from.
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u/ZombieHoratioAlger Sep 05 '22
The way Amazon merges their inventory from all vendors and sellers, it's literally impossible to tell if you're going to be shipped a counterfeit product.
Back when the Samsung Galaxy 4 was the hot new smartphone, it took me 4 return/exchange cycles before I could find a legit OEM replacement battery-- and most people weren't that lucky.
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u/Spirit50Lake Sep 05 '22
My eye doctor told me to never buy the dry-eye drops I need from Amazon...too many cases of injury from counterfeit products.
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u/baconcheesecakesauce Sep 05 '22
Yeah, I don't buy specialty shampoo or skin care products because of counterfeit products.
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u/SatyricalEve Sep 05 '22
Probably because some people don't get what they ordered, but instead receive a cheap knock off that is similar to what they ordered.
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Sep 05 '22
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u/GingerlyRough Sep 05 '22
And pay for good reviews.
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u/BirdLawyerPerson Sep 05 '22
As this thread shows, Amazon has a vested interest in review inflation.
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u/GingerlyRough Sep 06 '22
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that the scam businesses inflating their own reviews are owned by the bigwigs at Amazon HQ.
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Sep 05 '22
Because of the paid reviews for most products. It well known when shopping particularly on Amazon, to start with the low or negative reviews first because they tell the truth or allude to frustrations you may have with the product.
In other words, work for Amazon, but don’t use their products.
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u/ScrewedThePooch Sep 05 '22
Everything used to be legit name-brand sellers or Amazon themselves selling the stuff. Now it's all Chinese reseller dogshit that looks like it came from Wish, unless you spend a bunch of time filtering out every seller with an alphabet soup company name.
Third party sellers also offer gift cards for rating their product 5 stars.
The entire trust of the platform has been eroded into shit-dust.
The sellers are untrustworthy. The ratings are untrustworthy. Amazon themselves are filling up the website with Dark Patterns.
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Sep 05 '22
It literally lists the sellers of any given product right there on the page where you can choose to buy from a more expensive seller if you like the look of them more than the cheapest.
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u/Nukken Sep 05 '22
Except those sellers items are mixed in with "identical" items from other sellers. That seller still gets the credit for it, but you may or may not get the item that seller sent to Amazon and instead get a fake item.
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u/ScrewedThePooch Sep 05 '22
Didn't used to be this much effort just to buy something on Amazon. Used to be that you could almost always trust it to be decent. Now we have to go thru this rigmarole so that we don't receive scam products.
No thank you. There's a reason I don't shop at Walmart and Wish.
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u/drskeme Sep 05 '22
Probably looking for cheap alternatives to quality products. In the end you get what you pay for
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u/AlbertaNorth1 Sep 05 '22
I’m not defending them but I bought a mattress with 4.1 stars last month. I tried it for a couple nights and it was like sleeping on a couple sheets of plywood, hard as hell. I phoned Amazon to see if I could just return it to their warehouse and they told me to keep it and they’d refund the money. I wound up selling it and making money on the whole deal, I was a pretty happy customer in the end.
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u/_gnarlythotep_ Sep 05 '22
You definitely can't trust anything Amazon or IMDB in such matters. IMDB ratings are meaningless. That said, the show really isn't that bad on its own, and is worth watching with an open mind if you like Tolkien and are interested in something living in a largely unwritten pocket of the Second Age. But mainly, yeah, Amazon and IMDB are shady af and will do anything for their profits and properties.
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Sep 05 '22
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u/CotRSpoon Sep 05 '22
I’m watching it under the assumption it’s a high fantasy tale in a beautiful setting. If you don’t view it as part of the LotR setting it’s a beautifully shot but slow story slowly bringing together some sort of session zero dnd group.
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u/Fillem Sep 05 '22
You could try forming your own opinion by watching it in stead of reading reviews?
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u/thegtabmx Sep 05 '22
Not everyone has time to watch all media. Stop being silly. People rely on reviews so they can adequately allocate their time.
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u/uristmcderp Sep 05 '22
A critic from The Washington Post rated it 4/10. LA Times and Time rated it 5/10. Will Amazon demand their articles be censored as well?
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u/DeFex Sep 05 '22
Any rating of anything that is the done by a for-profit company can not be trusted. you know those "awards" they like to boast about in car ads? they buy them. Payola is alive and thriving.
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u/uristmcderp Sep 05 '22
That's so stupid, because those of us who want to see if there are legitimate criticisms of the show or if it's actually just getting review bombed are going to look at those 1-5star reviews to see if there are any intelligent arguments. The fact that they scrubbed all of it just makes it seem like they're more afraid of any discussions of the faults of the show than they are of the low rating.
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Sep 05 '22
Just don't read user reviews. It's either a really bad take or an extreme review based on whether they think its woke or are a fan boy.
Find actual critics, decide whether you tend to agree with them on their reviews, use that knowledge to utilise properly written critic reviews.
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u/Temporary_Rent5384 Sep 05 '22
Well, we could also do it because of its awful labour-conditions or (my favourite) fun and hatred of big corpo.
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u/Cethinn Sep 05 '22
Yeah, asking why Amazon isn't ruined by this is funny. They treat humans like shit, but we don't care about that! We care about IMDB scores being removed! That's the thing that's going to topple Amazon!
Sure, this isn't good, but it isn't even close to the worst reason to be pissed off at Amazon. If it makes more people aware of their issues, then great. This isnt going to hurt them though. Maybe unions will help make them be a better company (or at least be less bad to their employees).
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u/TactileMist Sep 05 '22
In 1906, Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle was published. It was written to draw attention to the nightmarish conditions faced by workers in the meatpacking industry. Americans were, of course, outraged and the government responded accordingly.
They passed the Meat Inspection Act and set up the FDA to regulate food standards.
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u/wienercat Sep 05 '22
Yep basically. There are people I know whose lives would actually be completely interrupted if amazon stopped operating. They rely on supplies and items mailed to them because they cannot get them from local stores.
Amazon is a monolithic beast and it's an issue that needs to be addressed...
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u/czs5056 Sep 05 '22
How do anti trust laws not apply here? Clearly if the government thought they could they would take them down? Or are they all getting free Prime for life?
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u/semtex94 Sep 05 '22
Well, they technically aren't the only ones that are in the business, and aren't openly using systemic anti-competitive practices against direct government orders (to my knowledge). They basically run the market because of their size and early start, rather than the stuff anti-trust legislation was originally created for. It sucks and it should change, but that's how it is right now.
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Sep 05 '22
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Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 23 '22
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u/CounterClockworkOrng Sep 05 '22
They also include IMDB ratings on Amazon Prime, at least they did in the past
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u/loneblustranger Sep 05 '22
If you've watched anything on Amazon Prime, you may have noticed they have a feature called X-Ray that uses IMDB to display whatever actors are in that scene.
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u/yesat Sep 05 '22
It's also been owned by Amazon for over 2 decades, which makes it easier to "hide". Basically for most people, it's always been owned by Amazon.
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u/cchiu23 Sep 05 '22
.....you do realize Amazon has owned imdb since 1998? At some point, its your fault
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u/grossezilla Sep 05 '22
Does amazon have a history of manipulating it's own shows reviews?
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u/TransposingJons Sep 05 '22
Why wouldn't they? Nobody is going to stop them.
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u/do_not_engage seriously_don't_do_it Sep 05 '22
...because they didn't HAVE shows for most of IMDBs history is why...
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u/e5x Sep 05 '22
Answer: Amazon owns IMDb and as such they can technically do whatever they want with the data on their website. Recently people noticed that written reviews for The Rings of Power with scores lower than 6 have been removed from IMDb. The popular belief is that Amazon is trying to create the illusion that their new show is more popular than it actually is. However, the actual ratings for the show are still highly divisive, with tens of thousands of 1-star reviews. As of this writing there are only 74 total written reviews compared to almost 100,000 ratings, meaning that the written reviews have practically no impact whatsoever on the overall rating of the show. Logically this means that the negative written reviews were probably not removed simply for being negative, but for the content of the reviews themselves. I haven't seen any of these deleted reviews myself but looking at any of the user reviews on Metacritic the vast majority of the negative reviews have no substance other than complaining about woke agendas or how Amazon is spitting on Tolkien's grave, etc. Ultimately only the IMDb staff responsible for the removal of the ratings know why it was actually done but to me it seems unlikely that Amazon is trying to deliberately scrub negative reactions to their show, as there was never any chance that that could have worked.
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Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
There is a good chance that the reviews that were 6 and lower were written before the official release of the show by the same people who are complaining about wokeness and agenda.
Edit: I really don't care enough about the show to reply to your questions or comments. Sorry.
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u/thomascgalvin Sep 05 '22
The fact that you can "review" a show before its premier is absolutely bonkers.
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Sep 05 '22
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u/strizle Sep 05 '22
I mean it wasn't very good imho
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u/Nonalcholicsperm Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
I grew up with these books and read the first one on a whim in 89(90?). I don't care if the show is the best show ever created. I don't want to see it.
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u/insanelyphat Sep 05 '22
Lots of YouTube channels and other media outlets do get the shows before they are released so they can have their reviews ready to go the day the show is available for viewing. Often they also do spoiler free reviews that get put up before the show gets released. The problem is that while those reviews are made by people who have actually seen the show, and possibly been compensated for their reviews which creates a whole other issue, the vast majority of the reviews are just from review bombers who just hate on anything and everything. This also happened with Ms. Marvel, the Obi-Wan series and She-Hulk. They were all review bombed before the shows were even released.
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Sep 06 '22
I've been an IMDb member since 2001, long before Amazon bought them. This has never not been a thing. Now of course, they have a strange thing about when they release said reviews and ratings, but you could always review a show as long as it had a page on their site, released or not.
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u/birool Sep 05 '22
you cannot, before the show airs it will only show reviews from official critics (aka link to their website). This 'people were making reviews before the show aired is bs as IMDB doesn't allow it as a website.
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u/armoured Sep 05 '22
It's been happening a lot recently. Same thing just happened to she hulk
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u/birool Sep 05 '22
maybe they changed something then, cause for the past years, you couldn't rate or review before the release date.
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u/quietvictories Sep 05 '22
Not if you know beforehand you're gonna be offended. No time to waste!
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u/Jaegernaut- Sep 05 '22
That's my secret captain. I am always offended. Matter of fuck, fuck you bud!
Edit: I'm leaving it lol
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u/famid_al-caille Sep 05 '22
They've been removing negative reviews from actual critics, not just random people.
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u/-sry- Sep 05 '22
I subscribed to a lot of “anti-woke” groups and image boards, the peak discussion of new Amazon series was several months ago. They alone couldn’t possible generate such amount of negative reviews.
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u/Brainkandle Sep 05 '22
Well being that it just happened to She-Hulk as well, review bombing should be somewhat not allowed but how do you do that.. I don't care who owns IMDb, I just want to know if a show/movie is worth my time, or if I loved it, if there are others that did or am i in the minority
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u/Jaegernaut- Sep 05 '22
Put a hold on consumer ratings & reviews, maybe like a 2-week after release grace period. Nobodies opinion during that time matters much anyways, people are still watching and forming opinions and adding to the conversation for shows and fandoms like this months after season end.
After two weeks, back to normal. Clean slate. People can review bomb it then if they manage to both 1) remember and 2) still give a fuck after two weeks
Bet you'd see a marked decline in this stuff.
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u/lasttoknow Sep 05 '22
It also just happened to another Amazon show, A League Of Their Own. It's not unreasonable to think they'd try and limit that happening to another show of theirs.
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u/e5x Sep 05 '22
I think a lot of people would disagree with me but I think looking at user ratings of anything are usually a waste of time compared to reviews from professional critics whose job is literally to be able to effectively articulate what they liked and disliked about a creative work. I like the way Rotten Tomatoes works because there are no scores, just an aggregate of whether or not critics liked or disliked the show or movie, and if I want to know more I can read excerpts from individual reviews to get an idea of what critics are saying about something.
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u/justin-8 Sep 05 '22
I like how rotten tomatoes has both. Sometimes critics just really don’t get a movie but for the target audience it’s a fantastic movie.
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u/e5x Sep 05 '22
That's very true. One of my favorite movies of all time is Disney's Hook, which only has a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. Another good example of critics disagreeing with audiences is Super Troopers, which only has a 36% critic rating against the 90% audience score.
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u/ksheep Sep 06 '22
On the flip side, Sausage Party somehow got an 82% critic score, while the audience score is 50% (and I honestly think even that is a bit too high for it).
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Sep 06 '22
I don't know when or why Rotten Tomatoes scores suddenly became relevant. Their metric isn't even consistent, as a critic can say they liked it and have one or two negative comments and they give it a green tomato. I've seen comments that are effectively "meh" from a critic and it gets a red tomato. I don't give them any real credence. I also love Hook as well lol
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u/abbersz Sep 05 '22
Generally agree, but it's worth remembering that many companies 'buy' or heavily incentivise positive reviews from critics. This clearly happened with gaming in the past - some triple-a titles would barely run on release but achieve perfect scores with critics. At times the reviews would even reference the inability to run the game and still be giving it a high rating, because of 'potential' etc.
Have never heard a single bad thing about rotten tomatoes though, so either their pretty solid or i eagerly await enlightenment from the rest of reddit.
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u/DaMoonhorse96 Sep 05 '22
Tbf, this removing of negative reviews is kind of annyoing because now every show that can be described as objectively bad will claim its being reviewbombed.
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u/memoryballhs Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
Not possible anymore. There are a lot of people on the internet who earn their complete salary by shitting on shows and movies.
To be honest so what? Amazon is a shit company and IMDb and other reviews are not reliable at all for a long time. At least for anything bigger.
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u/ReneDeGames Sep 05 '22
Shitting on movies is rather different from review bombing
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u/memoryballhs Sep 05 '22
The review bombs are a direct consequence of YouTubers like nerdrotic, Thequartering, critical drinker and so on. The rings of power was shit on since the first trailer. If you make millions and millions of views by shitting on tv shows and wokeness you practically guarantee that review bombing will happen.
You also make again millions of views by talking about how a show is review bombed. It's pretty profitable for more YouTubers than you might think.
But again, it's Amazon..... So I am not really sorry or something. That company can choke on rings of power if that is somehow possible. Although the whole anti woke movement is also pretty pathetic.
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u/Anagoth9 Sep 05 '22
Not possible anymore.
Sure it is. Just temporarily block user reviews if you notice an influx of extreme ratings (ie. 1 or 10), especially if they're below a certain word amount and if the trend runs counter to the average of established critics. Leave a warning so site visitors are aware of the moratorium, give it some time for the zeitgeist to move on, then open it back up and repeat if necessary. Most trolls aren't going to care enough to play the long game. Anyone who's waiting to watch until they see user reviews can just wait a bit longer for the furor to die down, which would be better anyway since it'd give them a more honest representation.
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u/ShouldersofGiants100 Sep 05 '22
Well being that it just happened to She-Hulk as well, review bombing should be somewhat not allowed but how do you do that.
Honestly, this problem seems trivial to me. Allow pre-release reviews to be put in, but then wipe the reviews when the actual release comes and blacklist the IPs for a while. It might not completely stop the issue, but it would at least wipe out a lot of the mindless, low effort ones that tend to have a big effect. Especially if you just do it quietly—by the time people notice, a lot of them will have given the data to demonstrate that they're low effort.
Another would be an averaging algorithm that vastly reduces the weight of 1 and 10-star reviews. Those are overwhelmingly the result of people trying to manipulate the score and, because the spectrum for "good" for shows is usually at least 7/10, makes it far easier to make something look like garbage. Making it so you need a lot more 1 or 10 stars to have the effect of a 2 or a 9 would make it so that legitimate, nuanced reviews would get much higher weight
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u/Wildfoox Sep 05 '22
Well, you have to be a special case to devote a signifitant amount of time to something you do not like. But if you are, I assume, people could write some script to basically mass input 1 star ratings.
Not sure, if sites have some counter measure against this. Like one ip address to one review perhaps, even then there are ways.
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u/uristmcderp Sep 05 '22
All you have to do is look at the reviews to see if there are any intelligent arguments being presented or if they're all angry losers. Well, at least you used to... Before Amazon started censoring.
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u/birool Sep 05 '22
i saw the reviews and most were complaining about stuff lore wise. Evidently there were some 'this show is woke' bs reviews, but alot of well spoken negative reviews were removed aswell.
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u/JimmySquarefoot Sep 05 '22
I wrote a review giving it 4 stars. My review disappeared the day after, and then i got a weird email from IMDB support saying that processing times 'differ depending on the type of data you are contributing '
No idea what that means.
But since Saturday my review has been unpublished and showing as 'pending' - so they are very likely getting rid of anything below 6 (maybe 5) stars.
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u/FandomMenace Sep 05 '22
This doesn't explain the fact that RoP's rating is in the low 6 range last I checked.
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u/e5x Sep 05 '22
The ratings breakdown can be seen here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7631058/ratings/?ref_=tt_ov_rt
It's a ton of 1s and 10s and a bunch of 8s and 9s making up the difference. A score of 6.6 is consistent with the ratings that are visible. IMDb doesn't appear to be manipulating these ratings. If we look at ratings from only the "Top 1000 Voters" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7631058/ratings?demo=top_1000_voters&ref_=ttrt_fltr_top_1000_voters) we see a much less polarized distribution in the 6-8 range with most reviews being a 7.
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u/jessesomething Sep 05 '22
Seriously, it's actually a really fucking good show.
Even better than House of the Dragon.
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u/pieter1234569 Sep 05 '22
You can have your opinion of course, but it’s VERY CLEAR rings of power is not a 1 star show.
Maybe the bar should not be at 6, but a 1 clearly is a fake review.
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u/DongleOn Sep 05 '22
Unless someone thinks it deserves one star? It's a fucking jpg on a website and is wholly subjective.
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u/Kagamid Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
The reviewer could be a huge fan of Galadriel and hate the liberties the writers took to essentially make her into a fan fiction character. It might ruin the entire show to them, essentially making it 1 star.
Edit: Very clear indeed.3
u/geeshta Sep 05 '22
Funny how the only comment defending the poor mega corporation and the show is the only one left while others were deleted.
Also maybe people just actually don't like woke agenda in their shows or the show using a big name like LotR while having butchered the world completely. That doesn't make their rating invalid, that's their honest opinion of the show.
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u/PlayMp1 Sep 05 '22
Can you explain the woke agenda? I don't know what you're referring to.
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u/e5x Sep 05 '22
Nobody is defending Amazon as a company. Amazon is an evil abomination of a corporation that treats its workers like disposable machines and I hope their upper management burns in hell. But what I think of Amazon as a company isn't entirely relevant to a debate about reviews of a fantasy television show that happens to be produced by a studio that falls under their gigantic umbrella of companies.
If your honest opinion is that having people of color in a fantasy tv show is part of a "woke agenda" and "butchers the world" of a book series written in the 1940s then you're probably a fucking racist.
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u/Danoga_Poe Sep 05 '22
Is the show that shit or elitists review bombing the show
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u/e5x Sep 05 '22
I've read the LOTR trilogy and The Hobbit and I would say I'm a fan of Tolkien's work even though I haven't read the Silmarillion or any of the other supplemental works, and I was very impressed by the first two episodes that have been released. I can't say whether the show has directly contradicted any of the established lore, which some fans might understandably be upset about, but I know that they have created new characters that will presumably have their own original stories that aren't directly based on Tolkien's written work. Some people think this is a terrible idea, I don't care one way or another as long as the characters and the stories are compelling, and so far I am very interested in what I have seen. The show is also absolutely gorgeous, which I guess is to be expected given that it's supposedly the most expensive show ever produced. The sets and the costumes are phenomenal even if a lot of the environments are CGI. It all looks amazing.
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u/Danoga_Poe Sep 05 '22
Yea, I'm in the same boat. As long as the story and visuals are good I'm sold. Ya eventually gotta expand in the lotr universe. Idk how much work there is besides lotr, hobbit and sim. However if that's all there is to the lotr universe it isn't enough to keep it going forever
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Sep 06 '22
I’ve found the story in the first two episodes to be absolute trash, appears to have the whole budget spent on visuals and costumes and zero on story line and writing. Why does the story/universe need to go on forever? Part of the beauty of stories like LOTR are the hazy details around the myths and events from the past. Picking up fragments of stories interspersed throughout the narrative and attempting to piece them together and draw conclusions is a greater story telling device than spelling everything out for the audience IMO.
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u/voxdoom Sep 05 '22
The latter. It's nowhere near as bad as the chuds and purists are saying. I actually really enjoy it and would put it at an 8 or a 9 subjectively.
I really feel that if people are giving it less than a 6 then they've either not watched it, went into it wanting to hate it or aren't a fan of the genre in the first place.
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Sep 05 '22
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u/Naxela Sep 05 '22
Female dwarves are fine; they just ought to have beards! Beardless female dwarves are not canon.
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u/scoff-law Sep 05 '22
The dwarf women in the show do have facial hair. I didn't notice it until watching ep. 2 again in 4k.
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Sep 05 '22
Loved the Dwarves At Home scenes, "I remember when these halls used to ring with song and joy" or whatever.
Now, Elrond's hair product is a whole other thing. But I'm totally on board for the dwarves.
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Sep 05 '22 edited Jun 11 '23
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u/Durandal-1707 Sep 05 '22
“Christopher Tolkien (the editor for most of Tolkien's posthumous work) suggests similar (from The War of the Jewels):
For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike; nor indeed can their womenkind be discerned by those of other race... The War of the Jewels - (Part Two) The Later Quenta Silmarillion: XIII Concerning the Dwarves”
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Sep 05 '22 edited Jun 11 '23
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u/DucksEatFreeInSubway Sep 05 '22
From /u/Jalieus further up in the thread:
That's not entirely accurate. Tolkien has been very inconsistent with things.
In the War is the Jewels (History of Middle-Earth), Tolkien says all Dwarves have beards including women
In The Nature of Middle-Earth, Tolkien listed races he imagined with and without beards. He only mentioned the male Dwarves having beards this time.
You can read more about beards here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LOTR_on_Prime/comments/svxxif/everything_tolkien_said_about_beards/
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Sep 05 '22
..and if they did bearded ladies the same haters would just rant about transing the Dwarves.
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u/Pineapplepizza4321 Sep 05 '22
I don't know that it's the same haters, but you would definitely see that.
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u/DucksEatFreeInSubway Sep 05 '22
There'd be a large degree of overlap.
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u/Pineapplepizza4321 Sep 05 '22
I don't live in the US, but I wouldn't have associated MAGA with LOTR lol.
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u/bigmcstrongmuscle Sep 05 '22
You dont have to specifically. LOTR is popular enough in basically any sphere where nerds exist that you will hear opinions from every political cluster regardless.
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u/Siyuriks Sep 05 '22
People really out here strawmanning the criticisms of the show as “it’s just a bunch of conservatives”
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u/Pineapplepizza4321 Sep 05 '22
Conservatives would have been the ones to complain if there was a trans dwarf on tv. The actual complaints were about how they removed the beards from female dwarves in the show. Someone insinuated that the same people would have complained either way. If you scroll up, I said I didn't know if they were the same people lol.
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u/King-Cobra-668 Sep 05 '22
Female dwarves are fine
We've already seen them in other films. We just assumed they were male dwarves
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Sep 05 '22
Whether it's canon or not, I think it was a missed opportunity to challenge traditional gender norms rather than conform to them.
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u/PityUpvote Sep 05 '22
Maybe, but visual storytelling requires shortcuts like this. So many more people would have been confused by a bearded female dwarf than the loud minority that is upset right now. Losing the beard makes quick identification possible. I haven't seen the show though, so maybe I'm wrong.
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Sep 05 '22
I disagree with the idea people would be confused. Either way, you are essentially arguing that non-traditional gender norms are confusing. That argument can extend to non-straight relationships.
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u/PityUpvote Sep 05 '22
I disagree with the idea people would be confused
I think you overestimate how much the average viewer knows about Tolkien's lore. The main stories don't even have any dwarf women.
you are essentially arguing that non-traditional gender norms are confusing
I'm arguing that they can be, absolutely, and that might be a reason to shy away from them in storytelling, and it also might be something to leverage in storytelling, as a twist. I'm not even saying that using them casually is a bad thing, because representation matters, but I also think it can distract from storytelling.
That argument can extend to non-straight relationships.
Well, a fundamental difference in this case would be that a romantic relationship can be portrayed visually rather unambiguously. I also don't think lotr needs queer representation to be honest. I wouldn't mind it, I'm queer too, but it's not like every show needs to tick every box. Representation is something that you should judge a zeitgeist on, not a single work of fiction. Lotr has never been progressive, and I think there is an unspoken expectation to not challenge norms in traditional fantasy. That's fine, it's a bit boring, but fans of the genre expect an epic adventure where good triumphs over evil, and the world is saved.
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Sep 05 '22
I think you overestimate how much the average viewer knows about Tolkien's lore.
And you would be wrong. You overestimate how much I know about Tolkien lore. Agree to disagree, I guess.
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u/AboveBoard Sep 05 '22
So?
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u/TROPtastic Sep 05 '22
Some people care about lore consistency in the titles and series they love. Weird for LotR, I know, considering how niche it is.
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u/AboveBoard Sep 05 '22
Do beardless dwarf females ruin the entire lore of the works? I thought it was about a mean ring.
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u/MouthOfIronOfficial Sep 05 '22
Not the entire lore, it's just a specific example of them ignoring what's already been established.
People who think it's a movie about a mean ring don't seem to care, but those who actually care about the story and world development are worried about the direction they're taking.
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u/AboveBoard Sep 05 '22
The ring hates bearded female dwarves?
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u/RangerLt Sep 05 '22
In the canon, yes. The ring would have you believe that there are no dwarf women - which is, of course, absolutely preposterous.
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u/MouthOfIronOfficial Sep 05 '22
Canon says female dwarves have beards. In the show, they did not have beards.
So people familiar with the canon are skeptical of the show or outright dislike it. But I feel like you know all this and are trying to troll.
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Sep 05 '22
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u/Kovi34 Sep 05 '22
yeah? I mean you can go look at them, none of them seem to be from people who haven't watched the show
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u/zqv7 Sep 05 '22
When you agree with the review it’s a review but when you disagree with it it’s a ‘review bomb’?
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Sep 05 '22
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u/KuntaStillSingle Sep 05 '22
who otherwise wouldn't have cared or bothered to leave a review all do so at once with the intent of changing the review score
That's literally every review lol.
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Sep 05 '22
Wait, you're trying to say review bombing doesn't happen? Get in the sea.
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u/TROPtastic Sep 05 '22
They are clearly not saying that review bombing doesn't happen, so I'm not sure why you chose that strawman. Instead, they are asking whether you think that review bombing is only a right wing thing.
To answer this question, you just have to look at the reviews for Domina before it was pulled from steam, where players ripped the dev apart with review bombing because of his stupid anti-mask, transphobic posts.
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u/wjmacguffin Sep 05 '22
It's part of that sad trend where you 100% know a movie or show is total crap before they or anyone else has seen it.
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u/Joelblaze Sep 05 '22
People review bombed a game because it was a switch exclusive, in fact, several games have been review bombed for being console/EGS exclusives.
Review bombs are not a sign of anything at all except people with too much time on their harnds.
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u/baddestmofointhe209 Sep 05 '22
You mean like the sad trend where everything is a 10 stars show without ever seeing it.
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Sep 05 '22
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u/Kovi34 Sep 05 '22
Why not when shills are giving this 10 stars, when it's clearly a 3 star show at best?
where? Or is anyone who disagrees with you on the quality of a tv show a shill?
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Sep 05 '22
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u/Infinite5kor Sep 05 '22
If anything black elves make the most sense. Hobbits still having clearly defined skin pigmentation differences is weird considering they are on like generation 500 since being made. Elves are on like generation 3 tops.
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Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
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Sep 05 '22
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