When we first launched GeekTyrant it was right around the time leading up to the release of Marvel’s first Iron Man film. I didn’t know much about anything that involved running a movie website. The only movie website I really read prior to starting our own was Ain’t It Cool News.
The internet was a very different place back then! Twitter had barely started and no one knew what a toxic waste dump that would become at the time. It used to be cool, and I used to enjoy it! Now I only really check in once a month and there are always several wonderful people that have so many nice things to say! Ugh.
Anyway, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige recently sat down for a Q&A session with New York Film Academy’s Directory of Industry Lecture Series, Tova Laiter, and appropriately described the internet at as “hell pit.”
During their conversation, Laiter briefly spoke about the processes of making movies specifically reshoots and how director Woody Allen would reshoot and redo elements of films because it was a normal part of the process. That direction in the conversation prompted Feige to say:
“It’s great and that always used to be, there used to be stories of reshoots in the press when I started in the building right over there it was literally the dawn of the internet and the dawn of film blogging and Ain’t It Cool News and people talking back and now we live in the hell pit we live in today, but at the time it was like ‘wow, people have opinions on movies’ and on X-Men 1 they didn’t like anything about it and there was the quote ‘well it’s a Marvel movies so you know it’s going to be bad.’”
I do try to bring a little positivity to the Internet. I’m a positive person who enjoys things, and I try to have a positive outlook on things. While a lot of people are negative, we are trying to do something a little different here and bring some positivity to the geek community. Disney CEO Bob Iger previously said:
“The troubles were greater than I wanted to take on, greater than I thought it was responsible for us to take on. There were Disney brand issues, the whole impact of technology on society. The nastiness is extraordinary. I like looking at my Twitter newsfeed because I want to follow 15, 20 different subjects. Then you turn and look at your notifications and you’re immediately saying, why am I doing this? Why do I endure this pain?”
Nothing good comes from being toxic, and in the end, it only hurts us. We don’t all have to agree on things, and we can totally debate and argue about things, but it is possible to be respectful to each other while doing it. Yeah, it doesn’t always work like that. After all, we are only human and we aren’t perfect. Sometimes the anger and frustration that brews within us are just too much to contain. But, we can try to be better and respond to things in a more positive and respectful way. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if two people with different opinions could walk away from a debate shaking hands as friends, rather than spitting at each other and leaving as enemies?
This is just my outlook on things. The internet doesn’t have to be hell pit! While we are only a small website compared to the corporate giants, we are trying to bring a different attitude to the online space and make things more fun and pleasant than hellish.
What do you think about Feige’s comments about the internet being a “hell pit”? What do you think about my thoughts on trying to bring more positivity to it?