Studio Plants, Myth or Fact?
 

here's a question...



Do you think Studio Plants exist?

Or are people who actually work for the studios usually just condescending jerks to regular forum members when they newly sign up to a place?

in some of the places i visit, i've found the people with hollywood connections, that ARE proven and known, usually tend to be very confrontational and sometimes insulting toward different viewpoints than theirs, and it usually doesn't take much to set 'em off either.

Other times, users appear only in one thread and don't post elsewhere, and then vanish once that movie or tv show is gone, not really hiding their tracks very well, leaving only a mystery as to why they even bothered.

this is one thing andrew and i tend to agree on (and it feels weird doing so ;o)) .... studio plants, I feel, ARE very real. Although when they arn't nice and supportive and ignoring of stuff they feel that goes against what they are there trying to promote, i sometimes wonder what the studio gets out of it if they cause a disruptive promotion on the forums end?

to me, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, even if the connection to hollywood is only suspected, not proven..and i have no doubt official people just browse forums all the time without folks even knowing too. hello peter and kevin, just in case ;o).

Thoughts, opinions? Deceleration of troll for your hollywood masters? ;o)
I'll take 'em all ;o)

Of course they're real. Paramount even got in trouble for it a while back. Other studios as well.

Now, there's a couple of different kinds of "plants" I've seen on the Drome.

The first and most obvious are the ones you describe... the studio plants. I mean, if you encounter a plant here, you're not talking to a producer, or a writer, or anyone really in the production office. What you're looking at is Paramount paying a 3rd party social media company who specializes in these kind of things, seeds members to boards/Facebook pages/Twitter pages of the thing they're trying to promote to sing its praises, drown out naysayers, and try and convince people on the fence that it's the best thing ever. If they're throwing millions of dollars of their marketing budget around, why wouldn't they? And of course, they vanish as soon as there's no further point in promoting the thing that they are.

The second -- and these aren't quite PLANTS, per se -- are a few higher-ups at Nick and IDW (I even know one really clever one in our ranks from Mirage! no, not Kevin or Peter, though I believe Peter does read from time to time) that are masquerading as normal board members here. Mostly they're just participating as one of us, not up to any secret agenda, probably just not wanting to be spoken to any differently than if they were just a normal fan. Still, they do sometimes break character. There is a couple, however, that are definitely here to primarily try to overly put over the project(s) they're pretty biasedly attached to in some innocuous and some not so innocuous ways.

I just find it odd that out of the ones i know who work for the studios, and the others that are suspected, they all have the same type of condescending 'better than thow' attitude. some even go so far as to try and discredit and confuse you :). and all the posts eventually read alike with a VERY positive hollywood tilt.

any links to the paramount stuff?

i'd be interested in that :)

Curious....

Would your opinion be that most every "non plant" person share the same opinion about a movie and that's how you spot the "plant"?

I'm trying to find the motivation here. I was accused of being a "plant" because I held a different opinion from the majority. Also, how do you distinguish a new member who comes and joins because of interest in a new movie or show from a "plant"?

Just curious.

"Plant" gets overused. It's like calling someone a "liberal" or "conservative."

But if they only show up in 2014 or 2016 and only talked Platinum Dunes TMNT, well... draw your own conclusions.

But it's walking like a duck and quacking like a duck.

It's all in how they interact that gets my curiosity peaked.


there are certain things i look for, mostly signs that are given from other people that I KNOW for a fact work for a studio and all reply in the same combative way. and it's remarkable how they ALL seem to have the same reply mindset of discredit, confuse, and crowd organize against opinions they don't like.

of course, the person could just be a little whacky....

in that case, I look at post count. post history.....how many areas of the forum they visit.

I'm usually not very good at getting confirmations on my theories. so i tend to keep those type of opinions to myself.

but it is interesting to speculate via messaging with more knowledgeable folks ;o).

Studios will do anything to try to sway peoples opinions in their favor, so it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for them to actually have plants.

especially these d ays when emotions run supreme. easier to change ones opinion just by causing a little confusion, i guess.

Yeah, aside from just generating buzz by getting people to talk about things, I don't really see "plants" as having all that much effect.

I mean....no amount of good buzz is going to make me like a thing if I just don't like it.

Then again, this is a fandom thing we're talking about, where not liking a thing....or worse yet liking a thing, is enough to get a person death threats.

Of course, not only studio plants but product plants, a nice portion of the reviews on amazon, youtube, yelp etc are not "real". It's really hard to tell them apart too.

Of course, I am one. Nick hired me back in 2013.

I'm not saying I sustain on photosynthesis, but if I did, I'd never tell you.

now that is how you do it.

besides, it'd probably be a breach of contract if you did :)

It's been going on since the earliest days of things like AICN. Happened with Highlander on the Highlander forums, too. Very tight knit, familial group there... suddenly Highlander: The Source is about to come out on DVD (it went straight to DVD) around 2007, BOOM, 100 new users join all talking about how great the movie is, tag-teaming members that'd been there for years about how dumb they were and high-fiving each other. Then a month later, all gone. Every last one of them.

Nobody likes Highlander: The Source. Nobody.

PLANTS!

Your join date kind of makes you immune from that accusation.

that's exactly the type of mo some people i'm curious about use when they find an opinion they don't like.

thankfully, these days people get tired of that type of attitude real quick and are starting to pick up on it and firing back at it, and the person in question is getting a little less brazen then they used to be. and he doesn't engage you when you fire back, just kind of lays low until the fire passes, and then when you have your guard down, pounces back with a 'your opinion doesn't matter, you dumb son of a gun'... attack and sees who bites to join with him in his little crusade.

the fact that he gets away with alot also tells me either the mods know, and give lee way, or just steer clear.

That's exactly what she wants you to think!
http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/moody.png

It may be just me but I still think Tigerclaw is a plant that guy shills for anything.

Yet I was still called one...and was accused of being paid by a studio to speak positively...so....it was the straw that broke my ever wanting to venture into the TMNT sectons here and made me angry enough to post some sh!tty attacks. And I had to leave all together for awhile because I realized I was letting the internet bother me.

I just liked the movie I liked. I don't get wrapped up in studios this and directors that and this one is the lead actor. :shrug:

That's why I wondered if the prevailing theory was that all true fans of a thing (or cinema buffs or whatever) would share the same opinion and all else were dirty "plants".

to me, the biggest clue is how they treat people with opposing ideas.

if they mostly treat people with respect, and i see that over a few weeks or longer, the plant theory goes out the window. if they call people trolls, or other names for having differing opinions, the plant theory goes up :)