IMDb to close "message boards" february 20th

Troy McClure

Suter will never be scratched
Mar 12, 2002
47,587
15,478
South of Heaven
Guilty pleasure to browse those things after I watch a new movie. Just to see what interesting tidbits I might come across, but also to laugh at the dregs of society that pop up therein. It's like a timewarp to the AOL heyday, with today's snark levels.

Same here. I also liked going to a board for a popular movie I hated to see if I was alone.

An example was Scarface. I saw it in high school. I tried to watch it recently, and it's so terrible. It was fun going there to see if I was alone.
 

Soliloquy of a Dogge

I love you, Boots
Aug 8, 2012
40,873
5,512
San Diego, CA
Another aspect IMDB should get rid of is their rankings since they're not representative of the quality of a film and are compromised by the lowest forms of life that frequent the site.

Bunch of trolls that automatically brigade films with 1 votes before they're even released simply because of the subject matter they deal with or actors cast in them while a whole bunch of other people try to cancel them out with 10's.
 

Nalens Oga

Registered User
Jan 5, 2010
16,780
1,053
Canada
Does anyone here remember a site called Flixster back when they had a forum and everything? I stay away from social media except when I need it to contact someone but that's the only one I used outside of Facebook and it was really fun as a teen. You had your own page which was a bit like a cleaner version of a MySpace. I ended up having some really good conversations with some nice mormon girl from Utah, a guy from New Zealand, a college student in Halifax, and a girl with some social anxiety from Illinois. It was really easy to discover movies and see trailers on that site, they had a rating system out of 5 and it was easy to interact with folks. Shame it went down after RottenTomatoes bought it (or they bought RT) and closed up the social aspect of the site.

There's no proper social media movie site anymore, Letterboxd is the closest I guess. The imdb forum was truly awful for films, very disorganized. You can still use the RateYourMusic film forum or a couple Reddit subs like Flicks or TrueFilm or the somewhat inactive Criticker forum.
 

Mario Lemieux fan 66

Registered User
Nov 2, 2012
1,927
406
Really bad news for me. Threads on the message boards like '' similar movies '' was probably my main source to discover movies i hadn't heard of.
 

kihei

McEnroe: The older I get, the better I used to be.
Jun 14, 2006
42,530
10,129
Toronto
I didn't even know IMDb had messages boards. But then I am a technological wizard.....
 

Spring in Fialta

A malign star kept him
Apr 1, 2007
25,085
14,267
Montreal, QC
Same here. I also liked going to a board for a popular movie I hated to see if I was alone.

An example was Scarface. I saw it in high school. I tried to watch it recently, and it's so terrible. It was fun going there to see if I was alone.

Hoooooooooooly crap. I thought I was alone in this one. What a godawful movie with no redeeming qualities. A trainwreck all the way through. A popcorn flick if I ever saw one.
 

izzy

go
Apr 29, 2012
86,760
18,732
Nova Scotia
why? its an easy way to get an extra quick read on peoples opinions on literally anything

stupid stupid stupid decision. Took away pretty much all of my reason to bother using it over other movie rating sites. goodbye imdb
 

txomisc

Registered User
Mar 18, 2002
8,348
62
California
Visit site
Its a shame. I wish people didnt let the negative crap on there get to this so much. I always found imdb forums useful to glance at after watching a movie for things like theories or alternate endings. Also the things i learned from watching threads were pretty funny at times.
 

PullHard

Jul 18, 2007
28,377
2,452
I think I might have had one or two good experiences trying to get other people's opinions on the message boards there

It seemed like most of the threads were started because the poster had an irrational love or hatred for the filmmaker or actors in the movie and wanted to gush about it or trash it
 

reckoning

Registered User
Jan 4, 2005
7,012
1,251
I'm going to miss them. If you had a specific question about any show or movie, there would always be someone who would know the answer. And they were great for recommendations, or to discuss things in-depth with others who liked the same stuff as you.

Yes, there were a lot of lowlifes there. Every male celebrity's board would have at least one thread questioning their sexuality, every female celebrity's board would have at least one thread about how they were either too fat or anorexic. Their politics board is a complete cesspool. But I wish they would have tried enforcing rules and getting rid of the troublemakers rather than just deleting everything.

As someone who has never understood the appeal of facebook or twitter, I'm saddened to see message boards slowly disappear from the Internet.
 

Troy McClure

Suter will never be scratched
Mar 12, 2002
47,587
15,478
South of Heaven
why? its an easy way to get an extra quick read on peoples opinions on literally anything

stupid stupid stupid decision. Took away pretty much all of my reason to bother using it over other movie rating sites. goodbye imdb

I wish the would have tried some smaller step first. Maybe something like shutting down the boards for individual actors for one. In particular, the boards for any actress under 18. Those were some sick places to visit.

Also, shut them down for any movie people couldn't handle. If the Ghostbusters reboot was too hot to handle, just kill the board for it. No need to go nuclear on everything else.

I did think of an IMDB guilty pleasure I'll miss: the historical accuracy debates for any movie set prior to 1960. Man, people couldn't handle it, and it was always entertaining. Some folks would freak out about accents. Others would freak out if there was even one liberty taken with historical events. All delicious.
 

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