Rant time.
Jesus fuck, people. Just relax for a second. We’re all going to be OK.
It’s true. There are some haters out there who have gotten on the internet and said bad things about The Force Awakens. Since 99.9% of the world shares my opinion that this movie is (a) awesome, and (b) a worthy successor to the original trilogy, an interesting thing has occurred.
The portion of the .1% who didn’t like the movie, or who at least claim to not like the movie, have gotten the lion’s share of attention.
Have you seen the “debate” as to whether or not Rey is a Mary Sue? Spoiler alert: she’s not. Not even close. But, like, one dude made a Youtube video about why his thinks she is and suddenly the whole internet is on fucking fire.
Guess what that did? Drew attention to that dude.
I’m not naming or linking him here, because the last thing I want is to perpetuate the cycle. But the long and the short of it is this: the way to gain attention on the internet is by taking a stupid and unpopular position on something. There’s a million blog posts out there about why SW:FA is an amazing movie, and rightly so. But those bloggers are getting zero draw for their little reviews, because they are preaching to the choir, wherein the choir is the vast majority of the world.
But someone takes a contrarian position, and now we have something to talk about. Now everyone can start debating something.
Except there’s nothing to debate. It’s a non-issue. Rey isn’t a Mary Sue. There. Done. How long did that take? Fucking seconds. But still we have to talk about it, because OMG SOME DUDE SOMEWHERE POSTED A THING THAT WAS WRONG ON THE INTERNETS.
This works every time. Every time. Take the loudest, most vocal, most contrarian opinion you can and you will get attention. Some people will love you. More will hate you. But all eyes will be focused on you, which means you get the ad revenues, you get the traffic, and you get all the benefits of internet notoriety, whatever those might be.
I wonder why our society is getting so divided, anyways. Could this Mary Sue thing be a symptom of a larger, systemic problem? Something to think on.
In the meantime: haters gonna hate. Fuck ’em and move on. SW:FA is awesome, and that’s all that matters to me.