Okay, i'm not sure if this is the place and/or time to post this, so you have my apologies in advance. I made an account here a couple of years ago, but I've apparently only posted thrice in about three years. As such, I'm not very familiar with the forum or it's rules, but I'm aware there are some fairly strict bans on here, so anything below is regarding the content, not the author.
The thing I keep asking myself what the heck these Galleries are? Every day there's another one of these pointless collections of slightly thematic and almost relevant images cluttering the front page, and I fail to see any reason for them to exist at all. The first time I saw one of these galleries I didn't particularly mind them. The general idea wasn't horrible, and with some polishing I imagined it could be fun to have a daily source of visual fun.
Instead, these galleries seem to have been made with just about zero effort and an equal amount of inspiration. The creative process seems to be somewhat like this:
1. A thing happens, concerning anything regarding gaming/movies/geek or nerd culture, or something completely unrelated to any of those.
2. The subject is googled, and the first eight almost somewhat relevant hits are searched for images, which are then posted here.
3. Profit?
While I can never say that the galleries are completely bad or horrible, they just don't seem to serve any purpose at all. Aside from that, the choices made in the galleries are somewhat weird and inaccurate. I haven't documented all of the glaring flaws, but sifting through the facebook comments should show some errors in most of the galleries. As example i'd like to use the "8 Vietnam War Movies From Most to Least Violent" gallery from January.
The author clearly avoids well-known movies in order to avoid looking obvious. This results in the gallery looking like it's actively avoiding the most iconic Vietnam War movies, which it is, and that just makes it worse, as if it's trying too hard.
Secondly, the author goes so far to avoid using iconic movies to the point where he includes movies which aren't about the vietnam war at all. If the author had ever seen "The men who stare at goats", he would know that only a very small part of the movie takes place in vietnam while the rest is more concerned with the Iraq War. Because of that one vietnam scene, wikipedia list the movies as a vietnam war movie, which raises the implication that the author just looked through that list until he found a couple of movies with familiar names, but which aren't overly integrated into the minds of the escapist readers.
Of course, this is only one small example. But almost every gallery has these kinds of problems, if not worse. The facebook commenters are usually able to point out a few pretty bad ones for every gallery.
Now, aside from the fact that most of the galleries are inherently flawed, they also lack any sort of direction. I simply can't see any point to posting a set of images which are vaguely related to something that is happening SOMEWHERE on earth at a certain point in time. It doesn't fit in with the rest of the content of this site, and possibly makes it worse. Of course, the idea wasn't that bad, and giving it a period of time to see how it works out isn't horrible either. But by now, it's pretty clear that this isn't going to work out, and that these galleries make the escapist a worse place instead of a better one. That's how I feel at least.
Now, you could say that the galleries don't bother anyone...but I'd have to disagree. I don't follow nearly all of the content on the escapist, but this one is the only feature that I feel is truly out of it's place and league on here.
Again, this might not be the right spot to deliver criticism (couldn't find anywhere else), and none of this is meant as a personal attack on the author of these galleries. However, being a passive follower of the escapist, I don't feel like this feature belongs on here because it's simply too bad compared to the other content. Not because it's light or simple, but because it's just not very good in any way.
