I hate them. They stop being funny fast. They are all interchangeable from one to the other, doesn't really tell you anything against about the movie or the person that just watched it. That shit could be AI generated and you wouldn't even notice.
@@angelsunemtoledocabllero5801 yeah and its not that serious. No one actually gives a shit what people think about a movie, and if all they want to express is one line, thats better than making up some bs
Thanks for addressing this, it’s so annoying that people get so upset about people not wanting to write essays about everything that they watch. Letterboxd is supposed to just be a way to log what you watch as you want to, whatever’s popular is popular.
@@maximumoccupancy how are they being forced onto you? Just block the people who most commonly make those reviews and move on, or, better yet, follow people that make the types of reviews you want to see and don’t bother looking at the rest. Let people use the sight however they wish, whatever is most popular is most popular.
@@owenicewater9704 Do you know what an algorithm is? That is how it's forced on to us. And the issue is that there isn't a select two or three reviewers to block to eliminate all of these annoying reviews at the top. There are literally hundreds of them that all get fed to the top. I don't care how people use the website. They can do what they want. People are complaining about the website's algorithm that forces this lame repetitive content into the spotlight over anything else.
there was one guy who i used to follow that would post multiple movies a day with a huge essay for each one, trying soo hard to sound profound, and it was sooooo obnoxious that I had to unfollow
@@tinkerella And if all of his reviews suddenly appeared as the most popular review for every single movie you go to on the site, you'd be annoyed, wouldn't you?
as someone who usually dislikes one liner reviews the block feature is a definitive trap card like you said. The only thing cornier than seeing a "this happened to my buddy eric" review for the 70th time is actually getting upset about it.
As somebody who mainly uses letterboxd to track which movies I have watched and my thoughts, this is interesting. I occasionally leave reviews and normally I will leave a quote I liked, a really basic opinion, or sometimes a jokes about something in the movie. I don't mind joke reviews, I think most people who leave them leave them for their friends who use the site, that's what I do. (The only time I get annoyed by joke reviews is when a movie was on a serious topic and the review seems to not engage with that aspect of the movie or directly make fun of and belittle that aspect of the movie, I saw this somewhat in the reviews of KotFM and it just really annoyed me.)
yeah i think this is also about where i land, although i think its more about these people with 30k+ followers making jokey reviews on serious topics, the people with less than 10 followers most the time arent gonna get seen by people other than their friends anyway. But also at the end of the day, i dont really care, yeah in the moment when reading them i can find it annoying, but when i close the page i dont think about it at all, it doesnt really matter.
the one-liner joke reviews are so corny to me but my problem isn't that people make those jokes (do whatever you want). my problem is that so many people like them that they end up being the top reviews. when i want to see how the audience felt about a movie, i don't want to have to scroll through two pages of bad jokes to get to the genuine stuff. if everyone is so tired of the jokesters "not taking movies seriously" or whatever, then just stop liking the reviews.
That's why it's an issue with the algorithm and Letterboxd not giving a fuck more than it's an issue with some failed comedian/movie critic recycling a dumb meme for a "review."
exactly especially when people like Karsten straight up have ‘reviews’ that just say shit like ‘I don’t have anything to say, just wanted to log it’ and that’s the top review of the movie. That’s not a review and it’s pathetic. If you just want to log it, log it without a comment
I gave Aliens a 4/5 and only said “Wow” in my review (cuz that was my reaction coming out of watching it) and someone got so mad at me when they saw that 😂
No one's mad at the reviews. They're mad at the fact that the repetitive one-liners are the only reviews that get pushed in the most popular reviews section.
@@TheGlowingManYT Buddy, it’s been 7 months and you’re here crying about my comments rather than intellectually engaging with them. YOU need to touch grass.
Like making a 6-minute video rant defending someone who gets rightfully criticized for posting unfunny, obnoxious spam reviews? Is that what you mean by throwing a fit over anything?
@@maximumoccupancy I'm talking about replying to 2 month old comments and defending weird cyber bullying about movie reviews. Not a single person on the planet cares if you find a review funny of not. The world is not made to cater to your every desire.
I like good reviews. Doesn't matter if they're long and elaborate or short and simple. Problem is that a lot of these one sentence reviews are the same few Twitter jokes repeated over and over again with minor variations that connect them to the movie. I come away from many of the most popular reviews on Letterboxd knowing nothing about what the reviewer thinks about the movie and knowing everything about what circles they're in on Twitter. It's not worth starting a culture war over but I'd really like it if I didn't have to scroll past so much dumb regurgitated shit to get to anything actually funny or insightful.
Yea this pretty much. When you watch a movie like May December and your review just says “mother is mothering” then it instinctually makes me feel like you got nothing out of the movie and u treat it like a joke. Like idk if you have nothing to say then don’t make a review, this shouldn’t be an app that makes people drive for attention
i understand what you're saying, i like a good amount of short joke reviews, some of them just seem forced or are about recycling one joke to get the most likes or something, so sometimes you have to scroll to pages 3-4 for some refreshing reviews... But i never looked at this as some sort of big problem that needs to be addressed like some users
rateyourmusic does this kind of thing waaaaay better imo. an album page has a separate section for short comments which can be toggled, and a section for reviews (and even then people sometimes do one-sentence reviews). personally i think shorter, one-sentence reviews can brew more toxicity and arguing, which i why i prefer to turn comments off. ultimately, with all media, i get the most personal enjoyment out of a proper analysis of it - i like to be able to understand what it is that i like and dislike about it. one-sentence reviews on letterboxd are kinda inescapable, and for every funny one there’s fifty people either doing the exact same joke or one that just falls completely flat. idk. i don’t see what’s pretentious about it, it’s literally just what some people enjoy more lol
Yea there should be “reviews” and comments or something like that. If you post a “REVIEW” and have a huge following - brace yourself for criticism no matter what it is. And I think a dumb one liner is begging to be ripped apart, you literally aren’t trying and going for easy likes.
The user base is also better. The rating distribution for a lot of films on letterboxd is wack and you have a lot of truly awful films (no way home) rated highly.
@@miz4535 I think they’ve made the ratings better now by reducing the weightage on 1/2 and 5 star films so No Way Home etc. should have more realistic ratings now - haven’t checked tho
People need to understand that not everyone on Letterboxd is Roger Ebert. Some people are just having fun. (We do need another prominent figure in film criticism though)
@@owenicewater9704 I look at their feeds and other media platforms and they can’t help themselves making joke after joke, its like everything in their life is a joke and they don’t treat anything as serious.
I got the opposite impression actually. I just recently got into using Letterboxd a couple of months ago and seeing all those funny one line "reviews" made me believe that those are the type of "reviews" that I should give for all the movies I watch but after using it for a while ive just accepted that (for the most part) im the type of person that has more to say about movies than just "witty one sentence reviews", but I also don't think it was ever that serious to begin with 😂
Use it however makes you feel most happy, write whatever you want to express about a film, whether that be one liners or essays, the app only stops being fun when you think of it as a popularity contest.
r/letterboxd is so annoying with this. People get so butthurt for no damn reason about funny one-line reviews like it's really not that deep. I can't believe we're even having this discussion it's so annoying
It's not the fact that people post unfunny repetitive one-line reviews. It's the fact that those are all the most popular, promoted, and most-liked reviews for nearly every single movie.
@@samfrank3999 If you went on a social media platform that you liked and exclusively saw things you didn't like, why would you not voice your annoyance to the people responsible for it?
I think a big part of the problem is that the people who take issue with the one-liner reviews seem to think of Letterboxd as more of a "review website" along the lines of Rotten Tomatoes or the IMDb review section. But one of Letterboxd's main taglines is "The social network for film lovers." In other words, Letterboxd is not a review website but rather a full-on social media platform themed around movies. It's not just for reviewing movies (which is of course something you can do on there) but for posting about movies, which can look like a lot of different things. The purpose of one-liner reviews is not to actually fully review the movie but more just to express some reaction to it, as you would in a tweet. People get mad about them because they believe that the purpose of all posts on Letterboxd is to be actual reviews, but given the way the site is designed and marketed, I think those people need to adjust their expectations.
Complaining about complaining in 2024 lord have mercy. Every argument you made against attacks on one sentence reviews can rightfully be said about your critique of their critique how are you however old you are and still lacking that basic understanding? “I should be able to post whatever I want” “okay same. your post is dumb” “you can’t post that!!!” truly epic man
The one liner reviews are the reason I like letterboxd. I'm not interested in reading an essay on every film I watch, plus I usually get a pretty good idea if I'm gonna like a movie or not based on the most popular short reviews
i use letterboxd for personal movie tracking/watching and i do silly one liners just for me! if people follow me and read my reviews then that’s awesome but it’s all fun and not serious whatsoever. hate that lucy is getting backlash for that cause not everything has so be so deep and thought through.
I definitely agree and I'm glad to hear your voice on this. Sometimes I just don't have much to say about a movie so I'll write a stupid joke that maybe a few of my friends will see. I follow people whose reviews I enjoy reading and keep scrolling past ones I don't, really not that difficult
Letterboxd should just à include a filter option for reviews like by date, popular etc and add a length feature so that you can chose 100 char. This would allow joke reviews and more serious reviews to coexist without annoying anyone
I only really joined letterboxd to keep track of my watchlist, and then I did kind of feel like I had to leave thoughts or a witty review for every watch, even if I didn’t have much to say. Now, if I have something funny to say, I say it. Or if I have a lot of thoughts I want to put down, I write a longer review. Or, if I really have nothing to say I just leave a rating (which I have even done for several of my favorite movies ever). Say what you want to say, even if that’s nothing at all.
3:33 People want discourse. Any review that can spark that is what's desired by us cinefiles. Granted, 20-something year olds on Letterboxd aren't the best ones to provide that (i am also one of these).. but i think the reactions being seen are a reflection of frustrations behind "influencers" failing to provide that discourse. Instead, they take the low-hanging fruit for Letterboxd likes And the presumption of longform reviews being pretentious is false. A well-worded, pithy longform review is not cringe.. it actually provides DISCOURSE!!! Just get better with your diction and ppl will happily read and respond. That is the art of criticism
The problem is that is the same algoritm for everyone, unlike youtube for example where the videos shown are based on what you watch, reviews on LB are just the most popular, which are always 1 line jokes
Letterboxd is such a wild community because the film girlies and queers are trying to have fun and the film bros are trying to seem smart and it is such a wild place for discourse Karsten really nailed this here
Literally I so am on the “why do you care” wagon, it’s so unnecessary. I love reading people’s little essays and analysis stuff. I love seeing people’s personal connection to the stories but I also love hyper specific memes. I watch a lot of movies and I love seeing the jokes that only people who see the movie get. I like all and it just depends on my mood and I write them all too.
I'm aware that Barbenheimer was the Super Bowl for Letterboxd users so everyone brought their A-game, but some of the best reviews in Letterboxd history were Barbenheimer one liners.
If you don't like one line joke reviews, you can just block the users and you will never see them again. I've blocked Lucy, 24framesofnick, brat pacino and Karsten and it has enhanced my experience. I like your RU-vid content but your Letterboxd reviews don't do it for me (which is fine and my subjective taste).
idgaf about the one liner jokes at all but i just feel like its gotten to the point where people are competing to have the funniest one liner abt a movie rather than giving any sort of meaningful insight
for me the reason i care or the reason it bothers me is that its just disappointing that the website has turned into people trying to be funny as opposed to talking about the movies. whenever i come across a joke review i roll my eyes more than anything because it makes me think "wow this person is afraid to give an honest opinion and has to resort to hiding behind a joke"
I like this video and have changed my ways. thank you for getting me out of that annoying, self righteous letterboxd user phase before I fully fell into it Mr.Kurstun Ranquist.
Letterboxd has people on there who think they're on the highest of high horses and it can be annoying... but at the same time, there's something beautiful about being able to record movies that you've watched throughout the year and see other people's opinions. What could be a 5 star to you can be a ½ star to someone else.
Tbh i dont think people are mad with one line reviews, its more so because they're consistently the top reviews of most films, where cult-like fan bases of these big accounts consistently (but also expectedly) support the cringe. People are frustrated they have to essentially doom scroll through this dross until they can find some semblance of actual thoughts on a particular film. And one line reviews can defs be funny - but not when its the same recycled joke everyones already seen on twitter and other lb reviews lmao. Maybe this is an issue for Lb itself to address the way reviews are sorted by likes and developing filters/alternatives for viewing reviews
I think the problem here as it relates to MAY DECEMBER is the subject matter was so heavy that seeing someone reduce it to "mother is mothering" seems a little tone deaf. especially bc that one review was circulating with that much worse one about women having hobbies. I wasn't viscerally offended by Lucy's review. although I do feel personally that if you watched May December and all you came away with was "Mother is mothering" I think maybe just keep that contribution to yourself.
haven't used it it a good while but there's so much joy for me in writing a long rambling review that isn't under any obligation to make sense beyond what my own thoughts on the movie will allow, more conversationally than the word salad reviews that try too hard, like yeah i throw in pop culture and meme references bc i'm part of the crowd i please but just having access to a place that lets me just say shit about a movie for however many tangential paragraphs i want to feels so great to me
You could also just exclusively follow your friends. Read things from the people you actually might be curious about their thoughts. Most of the time, those people aren’t going to be influencers or influencer adjacent.
I mainly use IMDB for my movie logging. Especially because it has video games and tv shows. Letterboxd has some tv shows, but IMDB has had basically every show I wanted to log, no matter how obscure. Because of this, I've started to used Letterboxd whenever there's a film or tv show (that they have) I want to talk about. I don't really engage with anything because I just use it to get my feelings off my chest. I don't really care for one liner reviews, but I can't imagine getting upset over it. Sometimes I hate being a film fan because the community just embarasses me, haha.
Theres gatekeeping about HOW you like movies or express it on any platform ... Just wonder why it was May December that caused such an outrage this time!
One of my my friends who posted my favourite reviews got bullied into deleting his account because he gave Skinamarink a bad review :( which is especially insane because his account was very small
I'm personally mixed on this one, but ultimately this website is for film reviews coming from the cinephiles and when the top reviews are unfunny jokes it ruins the point!
3:30 yes Karsten, just because something is the Polar opposite doesn't take away its faults, it just replaces them with new ones. 1000 IQ take over here brought to you by the writer of thought provoking reviews like 'cars' 'ambulance' and '....'
I dont even mind these one liners all that much, but this has been devolving into literally just one word 'reviews' or even just punctuation. You're not even writing a joke, just use the fucking log feature, you're adding nothing to the conversation.
i definitely love writing quippy one liners about a movie “serving cunt,” i personally enjoy leaving my personal and deep feelings about films to myself because i hate the feeling of being judged because i liked a movie more than everyone else or i disliked a movie more than everyone else. it depends on the movie for sure. i hate looking back at my old paragraphs about “parasite” that i wrote in 2020. but yolo! i love being silly!
Comment seemed to disappear for some reason, can't tell if it was filtered by RU-vid or removed or something. I use Letterboxd frequently, and for me, there are many pro and cons to joke reviews and essays. Joke reviews can be funny, but if omeone doesn't find the review to be funny, they really don't find it to be funny. And when a few of the more popular reviewers right now have so many followers because they have a big RU-vid channel, it's difficult to not feel like they are wasting their talent sometimes, and it can feel annoying to people like me who don't have that much of a following and post bigger reviews when the most popular users can just throw a joke sentence and get thousands of likes without any effort. I still think that there are great one-liner reviews on the site, but are often hit or miss (and for me personally, it's more miss than hit). And yeah I do get you on those thesaurus reviews. I consitently get that vibe when looking at reviews for SilentDawn for example, and I think comrade_yui, (filter the popular reviews for Inception to 1/2 star, you'll see what I mean). That's not to say that thoe kind of words shouldn't be allowed, but with how many of thesaurus words are usually in each paragraph for their reviews and how they are used, it really feels pretentious. Also there are some users (Sally Jane Black) that are super political with their reviews. But oftentimes, there are popular reviews that are one paragraph or more that actually do in depth and regularly have something new to say. Ultimately, I currently think that having 40-60% be joke reviews and 40-60% be actual reviews would be a good balance on the site. Go beyond with the joke reviews, and it can feel like users are not putting in any effort and are just grinding karma. Go beyond with the longer reviews and the site could start to feel very elitist (and pretentious depending on the review). I think what sets people off with the joke reviews right now is that the most popular reviews currently feel like 85-90% joke reviews. The scale feels imbalanced right now. Edit: The joke reviews though are rarely as bas as the "thirst" reviews (that often flood the recent reviews section), so glad that there are so few of them that are popular reviews.
Letterboxd is my favorite app and like one line reviews or not, everyone has done those at some point lol. Besides, I write "cringe" reviews at times as well but then when I meet up with friends to talk about it I go very in depth so who cares? Btw don't always agree with you Kursten but I still follow you and very much listen to and respect your opinions!
pretty much exactly what i've been thinking about for a long time not just on letterboxd but the entire social media. spend as little time on it as possible, especially the comment section. it will only get worse.
I’m one of those people who writes in depth reviews on Letterboxd just because I enjoy explaining opinions thoroughly. I do write some shorter, memey reviews but only for films I’ve logged beforehand just because I’ve still got an in depth review available for everyone In saying all of that though, I have no problem with people making short, witty reviews exclusively. In fact, when I finish a film and want to see what others have to say, I read the short reviews more because they’re more entertaining. If I REALLY care about a film then I’ll read some longer reviews but for the most part, I don’t have the time and would rather read something entertaining. Not all jokes are funny but that’s just how it is on the internet and there’s usually at least one I like
feel like im going crazy listening to people say may december is funny. what about that movie was funny? legit curious. liked the movie but dont understand that part.
Idk man. Zooming on Julianne Moore opening the fridge and she says something like: "We need hot dogs" and then this big orchestral music gets turned on. It's pretty funny to me lol and that's not the only scene.
I rarely do joke reviews, I think I have only done it only a few times out of the hundreds I made. I mostly do reviews about the movie and I am proud. I agree with you, which is why you are one of the best content creators in this community.
The balance between one liner thirst jokes and meticulously crafted reviews is perfect, used lb like crazy this year bcus of this. Truth be told some people gotta try harder at their reviews to not make the shtick stale lool
I just think it's kinda sad the biggest site for reviewing movies can't have a bit of a higher standard, maybe if you don't have much to say about a movie you don't have to say anything at all, and most of those one-liners could just be tweets instead the way they're written anyways. I think it's fair to want to try to improve what can be a really cool space to discuss movies with other people
It’s ok to give 1 line reviews and it’s also ok to laugh at how stupid and bandwagon-y those reviews are and how they follow the same regurgitated formats. Especially when you claim to think about films in a serious way and make your living off that - it’s better to be pretentious and wordy imo than being pretentious and shallow and jump at the most basic takes. But hey do what you want and be ok with getting made fun of. Karsten just feels bad for his friend, and himself, no is stopping her from reviewing, it’s a public platform and you’ll get made fun of if you overuse the same shit…
i mean i think people do what they want i sometimes want to write something longer sometimes something shorter its just fine but saying "mother is mothering" on a movie about a 36 year old woman that raped a child is kinda yikes
It's the fact that these annoying reviews are all that get promoted in the popular reviews section for movies that is the problem. It would be easy to "scroll past them in half a second" if there weren't literally four whole pages of these reviews at the top of every movie's review section.
Ngl David Ehrlick is one of the worst word salad writers on the site. His use of adjectives is straight up annoying to read. He'll even use a super obscure movie/writer/character that has like 5 reviews on imdb as an adjective as if we're supposed to know what he means. I respect his thoughts, but man i think he's a bad writer.
My take on the one line reviews is that they should b funny. If they’re funny, or even a little insightful, they’re fine. The issue is is they are never funny
the issue for me is when the "one liners" dont even have any actual substance. for example: your Napoleon review, which was literally just "..." I cant help but think that you reviewed it that was on purpose to get people to watch your youtube review of the movie. It's also just extremely annoying that it shows up as one of the top reviews since youre one of the most followed people on the app
The thing about the corny one liners is, that it feels like people think they have to write them...like it's a letterboxd way...There is so so many of them and they are not funny. But ultimately, I don’t use letterboxd to read reviews, so it's like a minor eyeroll kinda thing. I just wish people were little self-critical...you are not as funny and interesting as you think you are.
I think you said it right, just because someone has an opinion or a different perspective does not give people the right to attack or dogpile on something someone wrote for a movie review. I thought May December is a bad movie, I explained why on Letterboxd and wrote that just because it didn't appeal to me doesn't mean it should be denounced as bad even if other people like it, but the discourse needs to be way more corrected to be more intellectual and civil.
I mean I kinda was getting annoyed just seeing one line snarky reviews on all the movies, but I just muted the accounts doing it and now the app is better! No offense Kars lol
tbh I dont even follow Karsten on here nor on the app but it makes me sad to witness all the hate he gets for no reason. I don’t understand the urge people apparently feel to be mean and hurtful on the internet towards literally any insignificant thing that mildly annoys them
"we can argue all day whether May December is camp or not" sure but it would be a really dumb waste of time since you can just watch the movie and see for yourself that it is absolutely not camp. the word "camp" has been completely robbed of its meaning and is now used for anything from "good", to "funny", to "strange", THIS IS NOT WHAT CAMP MEANS!! i know this lucy person is queer herself so it's particularly upsetting that she's using her considerable platform to contribute to the further erasure of queer ideas.
