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META: Of comments, commentary and name-calling.

We, the Back Seat Producers, and there are quite a few of us these days, are a pretty light-hearted bunch.  We try not to take ourselves too seriously and often do so at the expense of one another.

Many of us have strong opinions and we use our blog and podcasts to put those opinions out there.  We EXPECT people to respond, we expect people to disagree, we expect there to be conflict.  If there wasn’t this whole venture wouldn’t be around anymore.

We don’t get a lot of responses to our text reviews… or even our podcast analysis… but we do appreciate and post everything that comes in.

That includes the text of the next comment that I’m going to post.  You can check out the article that was being commented upon here: http://backseatproducers.com/2012/07/08/theatrical-review-the-amazing-spider-man/

The comment that I’m going to discuss in a moment follows:

Spiderr-Man kicks the Dark knight’s ass // Jul 9, 2012 at 10:50 pm

you’re a dumbass. this movie is nothing how you described it. it’s beaten Batman begins’ record at the box office. obviously something was done right, though not according to you ya stupid reptile. and did you just insult hunger games? oh hell to the no. you’re just a bad critic to be honest. of course i love both series in a biased way, but you’re critiquing is based off of simple hatin’ on these movies. you focus on all the bad things. half the time you say some false fact about the movie’s faults and yet there are legitimate resons for them. J. K. Simmons said he’d come back as J. Jonah Jameson in these movies but there was nor room for the daily bugle in the script (obviously!). This is a re-boot. the story must be told in detail. that’s the way story-telling works. gotta problem with it? get it on dvd or blu-ray and fast forward. The mystery of the parents isn’t solved of course! it needs to be left for the next two films! and the mystery of the man in the shadows, well that’s a key factor in the next plot. Spider-Man and Hunger Games were both excellent representations of what source material was given. Stan Lee christened this film with his seal of approval and he created the character. Hunger Games followed the book (which is an INTER-NATIONAL best-seller) very closely. everything in that movie is how i imagined it as i read; even down to the avoxes’ costumes and hair style (don’t know how i did that). your nagging antics about subtle details blind you from seeing movies as pieces of art. instead you view the quality of the canvas instead of the masterpiece spread upon it. your skull seem pretty thick to be honest. And if you remove this post, then let’s just say that you can’t handle being told you’re wrong and will do whatever to hide it so others don’t start to think like me.

I was on vacation when this was posted and only today approved the comment with the following reply.  I have also responded with my comment to both Darren and ‘Spiderr-Man kicks the Dark knight’s ass’.  I’m under the assumption that this is not the person’s given name, but I’ve seen some pretty strange names in my time.

My response:

The length of time it has taken for this comment to post lies on my shoulders. I was out of town on vacation and wanted to make sure that I could devote an appropriate amount of time to respond to this comment.

My first thought was just to delete it. But that wouldn’t be fair. Someone took the time to write a post to the site and deleting it outright would be turning a blind eye to the anonymity of the internet and the types of posts that can come from it.

Reviews are opinions. There is no right or wrong to them. They might differ from yours, but inherently there isn’t a right or wrong to them. They might quote facts incorrectly, and that would be wrong, but the opinions about how someone feels or what someone thinks about the relative aspects of a film are just opinions.

That said, I believe that Darren did a GREAT job of describing the film. I saw it yesterday and the movie he described was the film I saw.

I do disagree with some of his opinions about the movie, but I’ve disagreed with Darren more times than I can even think of counting over the past 7ish years that I’ve been reading his reviews (predating even this website and podcast). I know that Darren disagrees with me on a regular basis as well. And that’s OK. It’s okay to have differing opinions. We THRIVE on differing opinions. If we all agreed, we wouldn’t have lasted 6 weeks let alone 6 YEARS.

I’m not going to talk about some of the niggling problems I have with reading the problems that this anonymous commenter had with comparisons to other movies.

I will however say that I do NOT appreciate name calling. There really is NO place for it here. NONE. Personal attacks are quite frankly pathetic and quickly invalidate any decent arguments you might have.

I am allowing this comment to stand and I’m copying the text of this response to both Darren and Anonymous via email, but only because I want it to be made aware that I won’t abide this sort of commentary. If you have a problem, with Darren’s reviews, or mine or Darrell or David or Jill or Sam or Scott, then comment… PLEASE. Engage us. Tell us what you think. Don’t make it personal. Don’t resort to name calling.

I’m posing this here to serve as reminder to all of our friends, fans, listeners and detractors.  It’s WONDERFUL to have opinions.  It’s WONDERFUL to be different.  It’s fun to engage people and discuss differing opinions.  Just don’t resort to name-calling.  Don’t make it personal. And if you take NOTHING else from the shenanigans we’ve been pulling around here for the past 6 1/2ish  years, take this:  Have fun, life is too short to take yourself too seriously.

– Tony