Entertainment Media Attacks Nerdrotic, The Critical Drinker, and Fans in General Over The Acolyte

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The entertainment media is taking up defensive positions around The Acolyte, and they’re coming for anyone who doesn’t like it… which appears to be pretty much everyone outside of the entertainment media. Looper targeted Nerdrotic and the Critical Drinker in a video which has since been taken down, although Gary has the receipts:

Hey @looper
Why did you delete your post stating that yours truly and @TheCriticalDri2 are encouraging hatred and bigotry with our reviews of a poorly written streaming show?

The only ones I see doing that are Lucasfilm#Acolyte pic.twitter.com/dPDRI7bdq5

— Nerdrotic (@Nerdrotics) June 17, 2024

Now, I’ve watched their reviews and commentary on The Acolyte, and I don’t recall them “encouraging hate,” and since they don’t use any actual examples, I tend to think Looper doesn’t think they did, either. In fact, the only specific complaints from Gary and the Drinker that Looper cites are about the dreadful-looking show breaking Star Wars lore. It’s hard to judge the motives behind this (outside of protecting Disney and Lucasfilm) without seeing the whole video, but I can venture a few guesses. For one, Looper has 53.3K followers on X, while Nerdrotic has 196.7K and the Critical Drinker has 317.4K. Moreover, while Looper has more YouTube followers than either of these guys, look at the engagement on their videos; Drinker’s review of the latest episode of The Acolyte has 2.7 million views – as Benny Johnson points out in his video on this, which you can watch below, that’s more than the Drinker has followers – and Nerdrotic’s review has 1 million views. Looper doesn’t have a review on its channel to compare these with, but all of its recent videos – as in, within the past two weeks – have, at most, 150K views, and that one was about Sean William Scott; its only recent Acolyte video has 11K views. In other words, people care more about what Gary and the Drinker have to say about entertainment than what Looper does. So, the Looper people frame themselves as the rational ones, admitting that there are things about The Acolyte it’s fair to criticize, including the things they cite from Nerdrotic and Drinker, but say that those guys are toxic and foment bigotry and hatred while Looper is on the side of the angels. That’s guesswork, admittedly, but the numbers make it seem like at least a little bit of jealousy is at play.

Beyond popular YouTubers, though, articles are coming out left and right pointing the finger at Star Wars fans for not eating up The Acolyte as they’ve been ordered to. Forbes, Inverse, The Mary Sue, TheGamer, The Daily Dot, and even Giant Freakin’ Robot have all run recent articles blaming fans for disliking The Acolyte and admonishing them for “review bombing” the show on Rotten Tomatoes, where, as of this writing, it sits at an abysmally low 15%. This was all preceded by Kathleen Kennedy accusing the “male-dominated” Star Wars fan base of being hostile to women before The Acolyte premiered, effectively giving the entertainment media sycophants their talking point. The review bombing charge is ludicrous; if The Acolyte were secretly the most beloved show to have ever been filmed, review bombing wouldn’t drag it down as low as 15%; the legitimate love for it would keep it at least hovering around 75%. Also, Rotten Tomatoes is a review aggregator; it factors in reviews by denoting them as either positive or negative. This is why Men in Black has the same critical score as There Will Be Blood; I don’t think anyone would argue that Men in Black is as good a movie as There Will Be Blood (the latter being a contender for the best film of the 21^st century so far, in my opinion), but they both have the same percentage of positive reviews, so they have the same Rotten Tomatoes score. And that’s critics, by the way; the audience score has There Will Be Blood higher than Men in Black, so keep that in mind when the shill media talks about the disparity between the critical score and the audience score.

If Star Wars fans are the problem then The Acolyte is definitely a solution. pic.twitter.com/VGHxkgFS60

— The Critical Drinker (@TheCriticalDri2) June 17, 2024

The larger point, though, is that this is a continuation of the current era’s phenomenon of Hollywood and attacking the audience for not accepting what they’re given. There is no desire to please potential customers, just a vitriolic lecture to them for not doing what they’re told, and the media follows suit. This is yet another indication that Hollywood is no longer interested in making money or running their business like a business, nor is the media. They’re all activists now, and their purpose is to push their message come hell or high water. If you don’t want their political agenda in your entertainment, or you don’t think the quality of their propaganda films and shows is good enough to endure their preaching, you’re everything they hate. (Revealingly, this further indicates that they’re not even trying to win people over, at least not primarily; they just want to toot their own progressive horns via capes and lightsabers.) The Acolyte may be the most recent example of this, but it’s hardly the first; we’ve been here before, and history suggests this won’t help the ratings for The Acolyte or whatever the next awful Star Wars product they haphazardly duct tape together will be. Possum Reviews has what most people’s reaction to this strategy is:

Why does this happen literally every single fucking time? Why is it always somehow magically the audiences' fault when a TV show is terrible? https://t.co/xdWdT4jmSU

— Possum Reviews (@ReviewsPossum) June 18, 2024

They don’t want your money; they’ll take it if you’re offering, but that’s not their raison d’être anymore. They want to scold you until you comply, or, at least, shut up. That nobody is listening to them seems to be driving them nuts. Good.