IMDB shutting down its message boards on the 20th of February

[McElroy]

[link]http://www.imdb.com/board/announcement[/link]

The IMDB Message Boards are closing down. The official reason is that they're not a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of IMDB users (anymore) and people simply use other social media channels to talk about and share IMDB's content. Another reason to consider is message board trolling such as with the movie A Dog's Purpose even though you have to go through SMS verification to be able to write on the boards, which is the reason I've never done it myself.

About the boards themselves... They've been on the level of YouTube comments for years (at least). Less memes and a little more coherent because topics are required, but there's a lot of shit-flinging everywhere.

Anyway, experiences? Memories? About IMDB in general too. Also if you want you can pick a favourite movie of yours and post us a goofy line from a one-star user review on IMDB. For example: The Truman Show "A child's mind could only deliver an idea like this, maybe plagiarising a Twilight Zone episode. - - More proof that either the majority are stupid or I am a loony." One outta five!

Fun fact: The most popular movie on IMDB is The Shawshank Redemption followed closely by The Dark Knight (measured by the number of ratings).

 

[Cap'nPipsqueak]

[link]http://www.imdb.com/board/announcement[/link]

The IMDB Message Boards are closing down. The official reason is that they're not a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of IMDB users (anymore) and people simply use other social media channels to talk about and share IMDB's content. Another reason to consider is message board trolling such as with the movie A Dog's Purpose even though you have to go through SMS verification to be able to write on the boards, which is the reason I've never done it myself.

About the boards themselves... They've been on the level of YouTube comments for years (at least). Less memes and a little more coherent because topics are required, but there's a lot of shit-flinging everywhere.

Anyway, experiences? Memories? About IMDB in general too. Also if you want you can pick a favourite movie of yours and post us a goofy line from a one-star user review on IMDB. For example: The Truman Show "A child's mind could only deliver an idea like this, maybe plagiarising a Twilight Zone episode. - - More proof that either the majority are stupid or I am a loony." One outta five!

Fun fact: The most popular movie on IMDB is The Shawshank Redemption followed closely by The Dark Knight (measured by the number of ratings).

Well, that should ruin the days of about three people...

 

[tippy2k2]

I'm sure there's a handful of people who are depressed but I'll go with "And nothing of value was lost".

The few times I have gone into the IMDB forums ended one of a few ways...

1. BIG SPOILER IN THE TITLE!!!!!! WHY, FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHY!

2. Holy hell, X is so hot

3. Here is my elaborate theory on the movie that about five people are going to actually read

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

IMDB had forums?

 

[McElroy]

The few times I have gone into the IMDB forums ended one of a few ways...

1. BIG SPOILER IN THE TITLE!!!!!! WHY, FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHY!

2. Holy hell, X is so hot

3. Here is my elaborate theory on the movie that about five people are going to actually read

Practically the only reason I ever go there is to feed a confirmation bias on a movie. For example it was surprisingly tough to find people who disliked Big Hero 6 even though it sucks. inb4 "no it doesn't, I liked it"

 

[Chanticoblues]

Never used them, and I'm a pretty big movie guy.

I also rarely use IMDB in general any more. It's just a place for credits and a bad list of the 'best movies ever'.

 

[Skatalite]

Yeah, it's too bad. I used to check the forums about every day, and it's the only forum I'm still using besides this one.

 

[necromanzer52]

Way back in the mid-2000s, I started posting on a particular video game's board on IMDB. There was such a great atmosphere on this board that it soon became my go-to website. Around the same time, I moved to a new city to go to secondary school, and, being a shy kid, it took me a while to get to know anybody. So for a period of at least a few months, the dozen or so people who regularly posted on this board were my only friends.

I didn't mind though. I could spend hours chatting with these people, and I often did. We kept this up for years, long after the video game in question had passed out of the popular consciousness. We discussed it in depth as well as just about anything else and really got to know each other.

Sadly though, people eventually started to drift away from it. The posts gradually slowed to a trickle, and all of the best threads got deleted after having no new posts for too long. Occasionally people do return there out of some sense of nostalgia and I'm always glad to hear that a fellow regular is doing well, but it's barely a shadow of its former self at this point.

So, while I understand that most people's experience on IMDB's message boards has not been very positive, this particular board was very important to me, and I'll carry my memories of it for life.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Time for a lil' trip down memory lane, to a thread I made 3 years ago --> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.839176-The-horror-of-IMDB-message-boards-or-How-I-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-the-banhammer#20605270

Edit: Shit, looking at that thread, despite it not being even two pages long, really drives home the desolation of the Escapist nowadays. There's names there I haven't seen in years. Where did all these people go?

The message boards might be one of the reasons why my period of posting reviews on IMDB was so short-lived. Never mind the fact that I had nowhere near as much knowledge or experience of movies to be judging them on any scale back then, but the average quality of reviews was, even compared to myself at the time, so brain-rapingly abysmal that I simply couldn't do it anymore. What little message boards I visited were the epitomy of everything wrong with the format: shit-flinging in every direction, armies of pretentious neckbeard fanboys and endless threads with one word replies with an actually negative amount of worthwhile content, since they took up space in my brain that could one day have been occupied by the cure for cancer.

IMDB's forums may in fact have been part of the problem why I've had trouble finding forum sites to visit frequently. The experience of IMDB was so eye-gougingly terrible it kind of left a stain on the whole platform, at least ones with looser moderation than here.

 

[twistedmic]

I'm sure there's a handful of people who are depressed but I'll go with "And nothing of value was lost".

The few times I have gone into the IMDB forums ended one of a few ways...

1. BIG SPOILER IN THE TITLE!!!!!! WHY, FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHY!

2. Holy hell, X is so hot

3. Here is my elaborate theory on the movie that about five people are going to actually read

There's also a lot of...
1. Here's why ______ sucks!
2. _____ sucks!
3. If you like _____ your stupid (misuse of you're/your intentional).
and 4. _____ is the worst movie/show/game ever!!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I use the database frequently but never bothered with the forums. There's maybe one good thread every other twenty and they all devolve into stupid name-calling anyway.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

I feel a great sadness to lose that many individual movie boards.
Where else would you be able to find people talking (or having talked, 20 years!) about that obscure movie that you also happened to like?
I confess to not knowing they had other forums (not individual), just assumed so but they did a piss-poor job of putting it in the fore and center.

As always, there is a petition, for what good it will do..

https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/petition-to-keep-the-imdb-messageboards-going#

---

 

[DrownedAmmet]

The few times I have gone into the IMDB forums ended one of a few ways...

1. BIG SPOILER IN THE TITLE!!!!!! WHY, FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHY!

2. Holy hell, X is so hot

3. Here is my elaborate theory on the movie that about five people are going to actually read

Practically the only reason I ever go there is to feed a confirmation bias on a movie. For example it was surprisingly tough to find people who disliked Big Hero 6 even though it sucks. inb4 "no it doesn't, I liked it"

Wait a second guys, are we just gonna blow by this?
What kind of monster doesn't like Big Hero 6?!You're a bad person for not liking that movie, and I'm a much better person than you for liking it...

Wait, is this what happens on most IMDB forums? Maybe it's good that they are dropping them, then

 

[McElroy]

Wait a second guys, are we just gonna blow by this?
What kind of monster doesn't like Big Hero 6?! You're a bad person for not liking that movie, and I'm a much better person than you for liking it...

I might be bad, but at least I'm not retarded like you!!! Hahaa get rekt!! But yeah, most threads seemed to fall immediately into a bunch of strawmen. "Since you think like that you must be like this Jesus what a horrible piece of shit you are." Not that there's place in the internet that'd be completely immune to that.

 

[Scarim Coral]

So is the Escapist gonna make a subforum to lure the IMDB people onto here like what they did with the Bioware forum?

 

[DrownedAmmet]

So is the Escapist gonna make a subforum to lure the IMDB people onto here like what they did with the Bioware forum?

Well, the Bioware forums are called Biowarriors, will the IMDB one be called IMD-Bags?

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Pity, I actually found a lot of interesting threads on there. Especially for movies that warrant it. For example, insight and articles on movies like Prometheus and Interstellar which have various theories are half of the enjoyment of those kind of movies. Tying stuff together, different POVs, and even discrepancies/plot holes.

But yeah, it does take quite a big shovel and a lot of digging to find those diamonds sometimes, but if the movie was intriguing enough I was seldom let down. Unless the movie was a bit too obscure and the forums were almost empty.

 

[RaikuFA]

Can we work on taking down GameFAQs next? It's a site that doesn't punish death threats but will give you a days suspension for posting something in the opening cinematic of the game.

 

[sageoftruth]

I'm miss some of them. Some posts prompted some really humorous comments, kind of like with us whenever Psychic Taco started a thread. I'll miss those. The rest... nah! I often asked myself what the point was of posting there, when I couldn't even get notified when people responded.

I'll miss the jokes. That's it.