New Thing #7 - Letterboxed
/I’m kind of torn on a site like Letterbox for various reasons.
First, why am I giving away my content for free? Granted, it’s not like anyone comes to this blog and reads it so Letterboxd offers a platform that offers eyeballs that could potentially bring eyeballs to my words but it’s so popular now that it’s not a given that one will get noticed.
My second concern is that it seems like the popular approach is jokey one liners or quick silly reviews. I should give in more but I’m late to this party because I have had no real interest in reading these other reviews and my quick dives into Letterboxd hasn’t really inspired me to delve further into the site. I used to post on a movie message board but cooled on that when I realized that most people don’t really want discussion, they just want to get their opinion out into the world and hope people like it. The people who do engage are, more often than not, trolls and fanatics who get upset at even the slightest slight of their beloved. My goal is to keep up with Letterboxed until my next birthday but I could see myself ending the experiment there.
My third issue with Lettrboxd is that 5 stars is such a hard and ill-defined rating mechanism. I might alter my star meanings but, for now, I’m going with:5 stars - Loved it
4.5 - Go see this!
4 - Recmomended
3.5 - Very Good
3 - Good
2.5 - Fine but forgettable
2 - Skippable
1.5 - Pretty dang bad
1 - Avoid this movie
.5 - Hated It
0 - Not for me / No Rating
The biggest concern is the zero stars - I’m using it as a no rating but I think most people might use it as a rating of I completely hated this movie.
Finally, there’s just the fact that I’m a bit of a downer when it comes to film and I don’t love a lot of films so I’m going to be one of the more negative that I would hope but, at this age, shouldn’t I just accept who I am? I’ve tried to be more positive, go into films with lower expectations, tried to be more open minded about what is “good” but, you know what, I don’t like what I don’t like and that’s that.
Anyway, I’m on Lettrboxd. I’ll let you know how it goes.