Comments by "Kevin Street" (@Kevin_Street) on "Insane Critics are KILLING Hollywood" video.

It's interesting you say that the Internet has pushed critics forward and made them more influential, because there used to be a whole lot more critics than there are now. The internet has been like an extinction event for journalism. Once upon a time every newspaper and magazine had their own critics. They probably didn't get paid much and didn't have any reach beyond the publication they were in, but collectively there were thousands of them. When the Internet came along there was a brief period where film criticism flourished and everyone had their own blog, but then Google and Facebook captured most of the advertising money and the majority of the print publications and blogs died. Today's entertainment journalists are the small group that survived the asteroid, so to speak. They say what the studios want them to say, because their own precarious existence depends upon there being enough advertising money coming in to keep the lights on. If a critic broke from the "mainstream" consensus and started to criticise the output of the entertainment conglomerates in a sustained way, their access to exclusives and their advertising money would dry up.
6