It wasn’t a surprise when the announcement of Paul Feig’s all-female remake of “Ghostbusters” was met with immediate sexism and misogynist backlash. What was unexpected, however, was what now seems like a conspiracy to sabotage the film.
As ScreenCrush first reported on Friday, the “Ghostbusters” trailer is the most disliked trailer in YouTube history, with 507,610 dislikes. To put that in a larger perspective, the 2015 “Fantastic Four” trailer has only 20,175 dislikes. The trailer for Adam Sandler’s flop “The Ridiculous Six” has only 5,803 dislikes.
Could “Ghostbusters” seriously be that bad? It seems highly unlikely, and as ScreenCrush noted, “ What is actually happening is that a certain subset of people on the Internet have an unhealthy fixation with hating on the ‘Ghostbusters’ remake and are teaming up to downvote it into oblivion.”
Who is that subset of Internet people? Dare we say trolls with a lot of time on their hands? As Forbes theorized, and we agree, these are the same people who threw a hissy fit when, after six consecutive “Star Wars” films focused on male heroes, the following two (with two still to come) featured female leads. The same people who verbally attack a female film critic for panning a beloved comic book film. The same people who send death threats, forcing female writers into retirement, and generally set out to make women’s Internet lives total hell.
It’s not surprising that the same set of sexist Internet trolls, Men’s Rights Advocates (MRAs), and misogynists who harass women online would band together to make sure that Feig’s all -female “Ghosbusters” was the most disliked trailer in You Tube history. In fact, they’re not even denying it. Take a look at this photo captured below and shared by female director Lexi Alexander in which someone admits to signing in on multiple accounts to downvote the trailer and inspiring others to do so.
Why is Ghostbusters trailer the most disliked video on YouTube? Cause MRAs live at their Mom's & have time to wastepic.twitter.com/gwismHJTdr
It’s not hard to find more users with the same idea:
Multiple downvotes per user would make the numbers make more sense. As ScreenCrush went on to report, the number of views versus the number of dislikes on the trailer simply don’t add up. “ The ‘Ghostbusters’ trailer is remarkable in that it has 507,610 dislikes on just 28.7 million views. That’s a staggering 56:1.” Since Friday, the numbers have increased to 652,812 downvotes on over 30.3 million views. Numbers like that prove that a good chunk of the downvoters didn’t even watch the thing.
But as Sony told Women and Hollywood, the total trailer official views on all platforms add up to 67.0 million domestic and 10.6 million international, making for a total of 77.6 million, which makes the YouTube number of views not make up even half of the trailers total international eyeballs.
Haters assert that the high number of dislikes aren’t a result of misogyny, rather commentary on the quality of the trailer, but that’s clearly disproven once you take into account the user comments.
The MarySue managed to capture a few gems as well:
The incident has led Sony to delete many of the more offensive comments, including some of the above, but that has only appeared to make the trolls more enraged:
They’re now on a mission, with many users logging into multiple accounts in order to drive up the dislikes. “Can we get to 700,000 dislikes people?” one user said. With months to go until the film’s premiere on July 1, it’s not impossible that the dislikes would even hit the 1 million mark.
But it’s also not out of the realm of possibility that this misogynist backlash could make the film a complete blockbuster. Men and women all over Twitter are already pledging to see the film as a poke in the eye to the sexism facing it. As Forbes’ Scott Mendelson pointed out, “ I’m willing to bet ‘Ghostbusters’ will become a smash.” Indeed, this nonsense has, if anything, made many people more determined to see it, and throwing cash at a summer movie starring women in lead roles that don’t adhere to outdated gender stereotypes might help the cause in the long run. Movies starring women don’t make money? We’ll see in July. So as Mendelson says, “By all means, ye mighty trolls, keep down-voting that trailer. You’re only making it into more of a destination attraction for 50% of the country.”
The women of Women and Hollywood will be there on opening night. See you haters in line.
