Another day, another dreadful petition.
This one’s a special kind of terrible, though. Following the negative reviews that have been meted out to new DC comic book adaptation Suicide Squad, someone who rejoices in the name of Abdullah Coldwater, and who claims to hail from Alexandria, Egypt, has had enough of critics dissing superhero movies.
In a classic case of shooting the messenger, Coldwater has created a petition calling for film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes to be closed down.
The petition in full, complete with erratic punctuation, reads:
“We need this site to be shut down because It’s Critics always give The DC Extended Universe movies unjust Bad Reviews, Like
1- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 2016
2- Suicide Squad 2016
and that Affects people’s opinion even if it’s a really great movies.”
Abdullah Coldwater’s petition has attracted over 18,400 signatures but if it was a movie, it would get a distinctly low rating on the “Tomatometer,” which gauges mainstream critical reaction to films.
So many people have emerged on social media highlighting both the pointlessness of the petition and the fact it amounted to an erosion of freedom of speech that it would probably get a lower rating than Suicide Squad’s 33%.
If you make or sign a petition like this you should probably just kill yourself, as you have nothing to live for. https://t.co/TqOgnPkreH
— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) August 3, 2016
People do realize @RottenTomatoes doesn’t actually review movies, right? https://t.co/KbnOqk56Gb
— Clevver Movies (@ClevverMovies) August 3, 2016
On what basis are fans going to shut rotten tomatoes down for? I agree they have an anti DC bias but they have freedom of speech!
— csipefitness (@lego4366) August 2, 2016
Abdullah Coldwater has in turn responded to his own critics, his message again presented with his grammatical errors intact:
“First : Thank you very much for reaching more than 5000 supporter. Second A Clarification : A petition definitely won’t shut down the site.
“The aim of the petition is to deliver a message to the critics that there is a lot of people disagree with their reviews. A lot of people the supporters and the opponents of the petition act like we are already going right now to shut down the site not it’s just a way to express our anger.”
Wasn’t it the film critic Molly Haskell who said “the internet is democracy’s revenge on democracy”?
