Grudge Match is a movie starring Robert DeNiro and Sylvester Stalone in which they both play old boxers. They both play old boxers because they both played young boxers in iconic films earlier in their careers.
Now they get to make a movie where they make joking references to the boxing movies they made decades ago – kind of like if they raised twenty million dollars for a bar tab and had people pay fifteen dollars to watch them get drunk and talk about the filming of these movies.
I noticed something interesting in one of the TV promos for Grudge Match. The voiceover says:
This Christmas – People Can’t Keep Their Tweets to Themselves!
Then some clips of the movie are shown, with giant tweets saying things like “refreshingly funny!” either superimposed over the movie clips, or given an entire screenshot devoted to their praise of the film.
I had a few thoughts upon noticing that the marketing campaign for this film was focusing on the opinions of Twitter users (A slightly different version of the ad states that Audiences are Raving about Grudge Match.)
My first thought was that this film must obviously suck horrendously enough that they couldn’t pull a few decent critical reviews.
Not that I trust critics, but I would have to value Peter Travers opinion more than an anonymous supposed moviegoer who could be four years old as far as I know, and states their nuanced endorsement in two-word spurts.
My second thought was that there’s no way these people are real. What kind of raging dipshit would go out of their way to praise an obviously terrible film?
I remembered a forgotten scandal in which Sony Pictures actually invented a fake film critic to give positive reviews to films that were not well received, such as The Animal starring Rob Schneider.
They gave the guy an office and everything. But he didn’t exist. Sony had to refund audiences for a portion of their ticket prices.
So, I did a little research and looked up the people whose tweets about Grudge Match had been used in the promos.
To my surprise, after going through most of these people’s Twitter feeds, they all appear to actually be real people – albeit real people who, to varying degrees of frequency, occasionally force awkward and obviously profit-motivated promotional tweets about coupons, live sporting event or concert ticket specials, movies, and other things.
Whether the bulk of the content on these feeds, which is non-promotional drivel, exists only to disguise these profiles as real, or if these are indeed just normal people who occasionally like to promote things, I can’t be sure.
Take @VicTeflonDon who tweeted, in what I read as a robotic and completely disingenuous impression of a film critic, “@KevinHart has once again out done himself on the big screen”
Now, I don’t see any possible way that @VicTeflonDon is a profile created by Warner Brothers, or an ad agency, as evidenced by posts on his feed such as this: which show a picture of his “Nigga pissing waiting for the train.”
Not sure that’s the look they’d be going for.
Which to me makes this promotion even sadder.
Not only is Warner Brothers, or whatever ad agency, using tweets to vouch for the film – they are using real people, who seem questionable, and who only on occasion awkwardly post tweets about events which they are clearly either 1) being compensated for, or 2) have been told they’ll be compensated for.
Much like the fate of these actors, it is just kind of sad what its come to.
In case you want to do further research, the Twitter feeds shown on the advertisement are:
@ChristyGirls03
@BrandonVtoczek
@TheHornGuy
@MizzLoveGuh
@VicTeflonDon
@MrGrade_A
@Ahhlekz
“In case you want to do further research”, read through my Twitter account and thoroughly do you own research. 12/26 might help you in your research.
I apologize if I am incorrect here, but it looks like you promote various Vegas attractions, such as Imagine Dragons, a 30k Giveaway from 8 News Now along with a link to click on, which looked tot me like you were spamming. Is that not the case? Because that is mostly what I based my judgement on.
My family are huge fans of our hometown heroes, Imagine Dragons. We would have loved to win the $30,000, so we could buy a pedal harp for our 13 yr. old that had Chiari Brain surgery on 4/26/12. She has a lever harp and we can’t afford a pedal harp. Every time she plays, her back goes into spasms. She has been sick since birth and has CVID. She spoke to members of Congress in June 2013 for the IDF regarding access to care. We attended the national conference and couldn’t stay to visit my family in New England because my 5 yr. old’s health was failing. After one week in UCLA Hospitsl in Santa Monica, she was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis. The link attached in not spam, but a real family property that we have to rent out in order to keep it. How much more real can it get. My girls fight every day to keep living. To suggest that I don’t exist is a slap in their face!
I just found this on your page:
Hugh Manatee @LA2SF2NY 18 Dec
@ChristyGirls03 hey, congrats on getting quoted the Grudge Match tv commercial! I love seeing tweeters hit the big time.
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CChristy @ChristyGirls03 18 Dec
@LA2SF2NY Thank you! I still haven’t seen it yet!
So, are you a fucking sanctimonious lying motherfucker or is there another explanation?
YOU HAD NOT SEEN THE MOVIE YOU WERE ENDORSING! ANYMORE SHIT ABOUT CANCER???
In case I read what you are saying wrong, what does an ailment and autoimmune disease have to do with buying a harp? You seem oddly preoccupied with fundraising. Hmmm…. You’re not fooling me on this one. I will get to the bottom of this. You know that two of the other Twitter users from the commercial have had their account removed? A harp? Fuck a harp.
I hope you have found out the truth by now. I am a retired educator/administrator who is a mother of three. I attended a movie screening on 12/3. I was not paid a penny to tweet about it or write a review. I gave my opinion on something, just like you have here. I hadn’t seen the commercial when I responded to the tweeter. No one told me that my tweet was going to be in a commercial. I gave a release to Warner Brothers after they asked me to use my tweet. If you read through their Twitter account, you will see that they asked numerous people besides me. I was just as surprised as everyone else. I can only speak for myself, but I have received quite a few nasty Twitter notifications with people slamming me. I saw a movie screening. I enjoyed it. I wrote a review and a tweet. Something that should have been a positive, has now become a horrible negative. Why do I do fundraising for different organizations? Well, my girls have life threatening conditions that there is no cure for. Why a harp? Her lever harp helped the doctors realize that she was seriously ill. A child with a genius IQ doesn’t forget her music pieces. Her cerebellum was in her spine and she almost died. This was not her first brush with death. She has back spasms every time she flips the levers of her harp. She has no C1. A pedal harp would let her use her feet and ease the spasms. She can’t take any more musicianship exams until she gets one. I hope that I have answered all of your questions. I haven’t deleted my Twitter because like my girls, I am a fighter and don’t ever give up. My girls have been through enough in their lives. Reading nasty things about and to their mother isn’t what I expected when I wrote that tweet.
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I am not trying to insult you in any way. I was insulting the fact that our culture is so far gone that a movie, which is obviously terrible, is using random people’s tweets about the film that they saw at a screening to advertise it. As if you couldn’t find a few people who like any movie – regardless of how terrible it is. If you in fact received no compensation, or promise for compensation, than I apologize for drawing that conclusion.
Also it is really creepy that Warner Brothers would have you sign a release and then scour your Twitter account. Very creepy indeed. Good luck to you.
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