Rise of Internet Reviewing

[Rachael Ward]

One thing that has continued to capture my attention as I research for information on how to write lesson plans to include new media, is the fact that numerous people on the internet seem to be becoming more critical of current media and media from their past. Certain sites such as thatguywiththeglasses.com and cinemassacre.com have teams of people, of various ages who all review different types of films, games, comics, etc. Mind you it is presented in a format which will give audiences a good laugh, I was really surprised by how much research these folks can bring into their videos about the topic, how it was made or facts about the industry. Though some of their reviews can be offensive to some and are purely subjective pieces, it stirred up an idea in me about how something like this could start. If these people wanted to become famous over the internet, why go about it doing critics on movies of the past few decades or becoming critics? Perhaps there is more of a desire in today's youth to be able to look at the media that they have grown up with and identify what makes it good or bad? What distinguishes it from every thing else? These are questions that I personally feel need to be addressed in the classroom and I can just see creating a video critic in a classroom would be an amazing class project. I may just be me however, I can't help but feel that this craze of reviewing media is a sign of how people of the media generation what to be able to have adult conversations about what has influenced them. If anyone else has an opinion, please get in contact with me. Or check out the two above websites. Be warned some of these reviewers are liberal with their language so if that bothers you, then I would suggest against it.