WARNING: The following article contains minor spoilers for Venom, in theaters now.


Last week, Venom unwittingly made himself an enemy of the Lady Gaga fandom, which is possibly the only thing stranger than watching sentient black goo from outer space force Tom Hardy to stuff live lobsters into his mouth while bathing in a seafood restaurant tank.

Suspicion was raised when a batch of similarly-worded negative reviews of the symbiote's solo film started spreading on Twitter this week, urging people to attend screenings of the Gaga-fronted A Star Is Born remake instead of the Sony/Marvel movie. Most were quick to flag it as a targeted effort from Little Monsters to boost the negative buzz leading up to Venom's release and help Mother Monster beat it to the top of the box office.

RELATED: Venom Set To Blow Past Its Opening Weekend Estimates

This news comes hot on the heels of the revelation that Russian bots attempted to capitalize on the divisiveness of The Last Jedi by bolstering the wave of negative opinions about the The Force Awakens sequel online. Speaking to The Washington Post, Morten Bay, the author of the report, stressed that the percentage of tweets he'd analyzed damning the film because of its perceived liberal leanings that were thought to be from said bots was less than 2%. But considering he also wrote that, "Russian trolls weaponize Star Wars criticism as an instrument of information warfare with the purpose of pushing for political change, while it is weaponized by right-wing fans to forward a conservative agenda," you can see why the media jumped on the news.

The A Star Is Born/Venom beef and the "weaponization" of The Last Jedi criticism aren't isolated incidents. DCEU fans threatened to flood Marvel's Black Panther with bad reviews ahead of its release in February. This warning of digital guerrilla warfare was perhaps motivated by a long-running pet conspiracy that critics who give negative reviews to DC movies and positive reviews to Marvel ones are "in Disney's pocket." The perpetrators who subscribe to this conspiracy justified their actions as a levelling of the playing field.

RELATED: Venom: The Best Easter Eggs, Cameos And Marvel Comics References

The "Them vs Us" perception of the relationship between critics and audiences has existed for a long time, but in the age of Internet-powered fandom, this tension has intensified as the opinion of the general public seems to matter more and more. And the general public also thinks it should matter more. These days, we can leave permanent written reviews about everything from businesses to household groceries, reviews that actually have the power to effect another person's purchasing decision. The same extends to sites where you can buy, rent or stream a movie or TV show.

The difference between the critical and audience consensus of a film is also laid bare in cold, hard statistics on review aggregation sites like Rotten Tomatoes -- perfect fodder for conspiracists to levy accusations of favoritism as well as inspiration to mount a calculated attack on a film's reputation and money-making potential.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='How%20and%20Why%20Modern%20Fans%20Insist%20On%20Turning%20Everything%20Into%20A%20War']



In the case of the accused Venom saboteurs, the methodology was simply quantity over quality. A hundred copied and pasted tweets could count for more than a single article published by a journalist. Word of mouth on a potentially global scale. You know that phrase, "everybody's a critic?" In the digital age, everybody literally can be.

How have things escalated to this level? When it comes to the ongoing DC vs Marvel battle, the foundation is a historic one -- a friendly rivalry between two publishing giants in the comic book industry that, for a subsection of fans, has grown exponentially in significance and bitterness to match the scale that the Big Two's fictional worlds have been blown up to on the big screen. Poor reception for a superhero film from either company is no longer viewed as an isolated case, but as one integral rotten apple that could sink a whole shared universe. "Are you Marvel or DC?" is sportsmanly banter for some, but for those who take it a little more seriously, a loss for DC is considered to be a win for Marvel, and vice versa. That's how fandom becomes a battlefield.

RELATED: Venom: The Most Gruesome Kills In Sony's Symbiote War

The Last Jedi carved out a similar divide in Star Wars fandom. Whilst the community as a whole is in general agreement on the quality of the prequel series and original trilogy, it didn't take long for gripes about Rian Johnson's controversial contribution to the saga to become politicized. Even if their efforts were minimal, the fact that certain parties in Russia felt the debate was a viable inroad to fan the flames of unrest in the West speaks to its ferocity and scale.

RELATED: Oscar Isaac Has A Suggestion For Last Jedi Haters

The domination of cinematic universes, reboots and adaptations in current pop culture invites the added baggage of pre-existing emotional attachment that viewers bring with them to the cinema. If The Last Jedi was a standalone film, its detractors would've shrugged it off a long time ago. As a piece of holy Star Wars mythology, however, voicing distaste for it has become part of some fans' identities, as well as a mobilizing force to "rescue" the franchise. Franchises like Star Wars are also demanding audiences have longer attention spans than ever before, with parent companies bankrolling a never-ending production line of content to sustain active and ever-growing fanbases.

Our current state of intense political and social division is reflected in our increasingly tribal behaviour as fans; loyalty and passion twist into narrow-mindedness and anger, which intermingles with a collective sense of entitlement -- entitlement to a property we've been encouraged to keep investing in and entitlement to let those with the keys to the kingdom know exactly how good or bad a job they're doing.

RELATED: Correction: Fandom is Broken

The Internet is a democratizing force, neutral in nature but worryingly easy to be used for nefarious means. It's not just about whether a film a is a success or failure any more, it's about whether a film deserves to be a success or a failure, and audiences are more acutely aware than ever before of their power as consumers to be the judge, jury and -- if necessary -- executioner.