One of the many, many ways that the internet has gotten worse in the last decade is that it's no longer possible to know if a movie, TV show, or game is bad, or if it just features a queer person, woman, or person of color. When some angry nerds get together and decide to review bomb something, it doesn't take many to completely tank an audience score.

Review Bombing Obscures How Audiences Actually Feel

The Acolyte, for example, has a user score of 3.9 on Metacritic. That isn't a good score, but it also represents the opinion of a statistically insignificant portion of the audience that actually watched the show — 1875 users, to be precise. The Last Jedi, the most controversial of all Star Wars projects, is in a similar position, with a 4.1 user score. The Last Jedi made $1.334 billion, and was seen by packed audiences worldwide, but that audience score was determined by just 10,635 users.

This kind of aggregation is usually fine if you want to get a read on an uncontroversial project like, say, Twisters, but it’s extremely easy to manipulate. If a YouTuber with a large following asks their viewers to go review bomb something, they can radically shift a key metric of whether or not it's considered a success.

In other words, if you're review bombing something, there's a good chance you're extremely online. There are good or, at least, neutral reasons to review bomb something. When Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition launched, users angry with its abysmal technical performance tanked its user score on Metacritic (it currently sits at 1.0). Sony deserved to get negative feedback from players over its decision to require a PSN account to play Helldivers 2, and the review bomb pushed the publisher to reverse its decision.

Do User Scores Actually Matter When They're This Easy To Manipulate?

That individual result may be good, but it ultimately has a similar negative effect. It makes online review aggregators completely unreliable. It makes it so that, when you see that audiences hated something, you have to go dig into the extremely weird, esoteric reasons they decided to target that specific media property. Whether for malicious or beneficial ends, review bombing makes the internet less useful. Instead of providing a quick glance answer to the question ‘Is this any good?’, review bombing makes review aggregators near useless.

I don't mean to say that the two kinds of review bombing are equivalent. One is bigoted, and the other is one of the few ways that consumers can stick it to massive corporations when they make terrible, unpopular decisions. Regardless, it would be nice to be able to look up a new TV show, movie, or game and get an actual, honest sample of what its audience thinks about it.

The vast majority of people in the world watch or play something, like it or dislike it, and then move on with their lives. Most people aren't itching to get into a fight about Assassin's Creed Shadows starring a Black samurai. Most people see that news and then wait and see if the game is any good, then play it or skip it. It's that simple.

If you're so angry about Yasuke's inclusion Shadows, or Gladiator 2's use of a hip-hop song, or Star Wars Outlaws making its lead female character "uglier," that you feel the need to post constantly about it online, downvote trailers, and/or squad up with other haters and review bomb the game once it comes out, you're a weird little person who needs to be weaned off the internet circles you're invested in like a baby being taught to stop sucking its thumb. Step away from your computer, set down your phone, and have a normal day.