I browse IMDB quite a lot, and that has inevitably led to scouring the message boards. I wish I could fully encapsulate the horror of the majority of them, but suffice to say that whenever I see someone ***** about the low content rules here or calling the Escapist moderators uptight nazis, I want to smack them around with a steel baseball bat. The rules and the mods are there for a reason, and a damn good one at that! They are what keeps this site from becoming a wasteland of poor grammar, idiocy, smugness, trolling and pre-school level arguments.
I guess I should elaborate why the IMDB forums make me want to eat my own face, so just a few examples:
- A thread on the After Earth board titled "A thinking man's movie. Masses, stay away" with dozens of people agreeing with the title.
- People claiming Eiken is actually a funny anime
- A couple of neckbeards writing entire essays on The Counselor and dismissing anyone who levels legitimate criticisms at it with the classic argument of "Go watch your Michael Bay movies, dumbass, you don't get it". You thought Evangelion fanboys were insufferable? Check out the board on that movie and claw your eyes out in horror.
- The reviews have no standards for grammar, structure, informativeness or even coherent language. The only rules they have is to not have hateful or foul language, and the review must be over 10 lines of text. I could write a review consisting entirely of the words "Boom boom pow whacka wacka doodidlydoo" and not get written up.
As Yahtzee said it, you can't appreciate pleasure if there hasn't been pain to put it into context. I've been on this site for years despite having a diminishing interest in video games because the posts are usually level-headed, the topics interesting and the people nice. But only after seeing the wretched hive of scum and villainy that are the IMDB message boards did I realize what a great forum The Escapist is, and especially learnt to appreciate the strict modding and posting rules. If you honestly complain about the low content rule, you have no idea how horrible things could be without it.
For discussion value, have you known the horror of IMDB forums? If not, have you had experiences that made you appreciate The Escapist even more? If you disagree, why?
I guess I should elaborate why the IMDB forums make me want to eat my own face, so just a few examples:
- A thread on the After Earth board titled "A thinking man's movie. Masses, stay away" with dozens of people agreeing with the title.
- People claiming Eiken is actually a funny anime
- A couple of neckbeards writing entire essays on The Counselor and dismissing anyone who levels legitimate criticisms at it with the classic argument of "Go watch your Michael Bay movies, dumbass, you don't get it". You thought Evangelion fanboys were insufferable? Check out the board on that movie and claw your eyes out in horror.
- The reviews have no standards for grammar, structure, informativeness or even coherent language. The only rules they have is to not have hateful or foul language, and the review must be over 10 lines of text. I could write a review consisting entirely of the words "Boom boom pow whacka wacka doodidlydoo" and not get written up.
As Yahtzee said it, you can't appreciate pleasure if there hasn't been pain to put it into context. I've been on this site for years despite having a diminishing interest in video games because the posts are usually level-headed, the topics interesting and the people nice. But only after seeing the wretched hive of scum and villainy that are the IMDB message boards did I realize what a great forum The Escapist is, and especially learnt to appreciate the strict modding and posting rules. If you honestly complain about the low content rule, you have no idea how horrible things could be without it.
For discussion value, have you known the horror of IMDB forums? If not, have you had experiences that made you appreciate The Escapist even more? If you disagree, why?