Four and a half stars
Anyone who’s been to the movies with me knows that as soon as the credits roll, I have to go on my phone. That’s because I have spent the last 90 to 200 minutes deciding how many stars the film deserved out of five. I, and approximately 9 million others, keep up this ritual on the social media app Letterboxd. Letterboxd is a relatively new social media app designed for film reviews. It has gained a lot of notoriety lately since beloved filmmaker Martin Scorsese joined this year.
Multiple Union College students have recently asked me if I had a Letterboxd account. It seems that their numbers are growing. A younger version of me would be overjoyed to share that information, but when it happened I was tempted to lie. I have used Letterboxd for years with very little self-censorship. A lot of my older reviews from my teenage years are very long and make very little sense.
Many users use the app to write excessively verbose descriptions of simple films. You might assume that they were paid by the word, but, in fact, they aren’t paid at all. I used to write a lot of these, although I’ve deleted most of them now for fear of them ever being discovered. In some ways, the app was very helpful in my efforts to understand how I felt about movies. I left a very long review of 2020’s best picture winner “Nomadland.” Writing out my thoughts helped me understand how I felt about the film, but it had very little to do with the film itself.
Whether or not Letterboxd has been a net-positive for film is very debatable. Personally, I’ve discovered a lot more films than I ever would have on my own. At the same time, I’ve neglected some others because my tastes have assimilated somewhat to the tastes of other users. This gets to the root of the problem that social media poses to society. Since everyone’s tastes are now totally socialized, differences of opinion are fading.
Take the case of “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” That film was Letterboxd’s baby. It quickly became one of the most highly rated films on the entire website. But as soon as it gained its popularity, lots of people who hadn’t seen it yet (of which I am one) became predisposed to hate the movie. That is what it is to be a hipster. By the time the Oscars rolled around and it won almost every major category, it felt hollow and artificial.
For better or worse, I predict that social media will eventually invade every part of culture. Personally, I have chosen to embrace the future and fully log on, but I do get the sense that it cheapens the experience — but at least I have a digital record of whether or not I’ve seen “Coco.”
By Luke Morris