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Melania drops 67% at US box office as Rotten Tomatoes defends record-breaking audience scores
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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Doesn't mean they aren't paid shills.
Rotted Rotten Tomatoes.
I saw a clip of...maybe Jordan Klepper...interviewing people going into a showing. All of them just full-on fan-girl with anticipation, and completely upside down from the entire rest of the world. All older white people, fancy dress, clearly wealthy; might have been a premier.
It left me thinking that someone should follow some of these people around for a while to see where their special reality comes from. Study them, like Jane Goodall with the apes.
I saw that too. They were all a bunch of rich Republicans. The screening was at the Kennedy center so it wouldn't surprise me if basically everyone watching that screening was a government worker (or their friend/family) who probably moved to DC specifically to work for their favorite fascist.
I also wondered how those people could be real and studying them wouldn't be a bad idea.
Sounds like a bunch of DEI hires to me.
Nazi snowflakes deserve jobs too! /s
Paid crisis actors.
Buying a ticket and actually watching the movie are two different things. For all we know all those that "bought" a ticket and left a review are all the military personnel that were ordered to go see it and probably were ordered to leave a glowing review.
for boston they had a craigslist post asking for people to go and be paid for launch night
I assume you're referring to this post which was definitely fake. The numbers in the ad are prank numbers.
Perhaps, but it's still believable, if past reports of similar things for this family are true. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/donald-trump-campaign-offered-actors-803161/
what's that meme about russian bot farms only this time it's rt reviews
The only people buying tickets for this are maga morons, so this makes sense.
it makes sesnse though. Anyone paying to see it is probably MAGA anyway, so of course they’re going to rate it highly.
i doubt very many non MAGA types have seen it, so there will be very few negative reviews for that reason alone.
Probably the equivalent of publishing companies buying thousands of copies of books so that they are best sellers.
Maybe I don't understand that site, but you click on the 99% rating and you get a list of reviews that shows 20 rotten, 2 fresh. Just a bad look imo.
Sorry in this case we can't tell you how the ratings work, it is classified for national security reasons.
I'm not convinced there's a conspiracy here. Seems entirely likely that Rotten Tomatoes has no contingency for the release of a movie so blatantly sycophantic and propagandistic that the only people spending money on tickets are those who are already bought into the fantasy.
and bots.
and when you look at who owns the sites, you have to also throw in the very real possibility of manipulation of the data itself from within, too.
Exactly, and it doesn't mean that Rotten Tomatoes is somehow involved in the review manipulation. It is obviously possible for an external party to influence the audience score, they just need enough money to buy tickets that can verify. It's probably a much easier way than pressuring RT to manipulate the reviews if you have the money (and maybe even an interest in funneling that money into movie earnings)
That most people wouldn't even think of buying a ticket and thus can't post a review almost definitely plays a part as well.