Allow us to grieve a little over the impending demise of the Internet Movie Data Base message boards, which the site will discontinue as of Feb. 20th, 2017......
IMDB's rational for this, and we quote, is that the boards no longer supply a 'positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our users'. For those of you who aren't fluent in Public Relations Spin-Speak, as a public service we'll give you the English translation......"Here's the thing, the boards are infested with so many repulsive, psychotic, mean-spirited trolls, our site's like a 250 million room hotel with unstoppable, un-killable bedbugs. And we don't have the time, the personnel, or the desire to fumigate. So we're gonna have to take out all the beds......sorry, you can't stay in the rooms anymore, but you're free to roam around the halls......"
What we'll miss: The IMDB boards provided a fun, and contrary to the site's opinion, useful stopoff if a plot point or story glitch confused or baffled you.....you could, just like the Wizard Of Oz, commiserate, confer and otherwise hobnob with other posters who were either just as confused as you ("Yes, I didn't understand the hell was going in this movie either...") or would chime in to helpfully straighten you out. ("The guy with the mohawk and briefcase was Brad Pitt's long lost brother!")
And if you felt passionate enough about a film, TV show or actor to post an opinion.....you could end up engaging with a host of other people whose opinions might be diametrically opposed to yours, but valid and well written nonetheless.
Unfortunately.....and we see IMDB's point here, the message boards, like the rest of unfettered social media, gave every dark-hearted, vile soul in the world free reign to publish their every inhuman thought that popped into their addled heads....(BQ covered this same ground in our Jan.30, 2017 post, "The Id From Outer Space".....) Sometimes the sheer viciousness of their comments could provoke you to shocked laughter.....especially when these slugs-from-hell got into extended message-board arguments with each other, like comic book villains hurling laser-powered insults from their fingertips.
But like public discourse in every media these days, the IMDB trolls dragged the message boards deeply into the gutter, which we guess reached the tipping point with the folks in charge......we remember stopping into the board of a gifted young actress we admired and recoiled at the sheer number of sociopaths taking out their rapist fantasies for a public stroll. A damn shame, since the boards also functioned as a forum for millions of legitimate, articulate and passionately well spoken film and television aficionados.
So hail and farewell, IMDB Boards......we'll surely miss the entertainment value of posters' reviews, comments, and the invaluable explanations that cleared up the last ten minutes of that Mumblecore Indie film we suffered through.......can't say we'll miss that creepy, detestable bunch whose greatest ambition involved rubbing some actress's feet......
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