MovieBob Syndrome
Photo by Robert Couse-Baker via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) Photo was resized & cropped.
Before I explain what exactly the title means, a lot of background is necessary as to who this term is named after, and why I chose him specifically for it.
MovieBob, or Bob Chipman, is a movie critic and general nerd explainer for The Escapist, a video game and nerd culture website that has collapsed approximately twelve dozen times in the last two decades. After like the third time since 2012, the former editors from like two collapses ago rebuilt the site and brought back MovieBob in 2018 after he was let go (or fired, depending on who you talk to) in February of 2015. I discovered MovieBob around 2012 when I decided to check out the rest of The Escapist in preparation for the first annual Escapist Expo (they only ended up doing it twice.) I even talked to him at the first one for a few brief moments about some of the movies he had recommended. Most people who go to The Escapist know it for one thing: Zero Punctuation. The lovely video game review series that is hosted by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, my favorite video game reviewer. He’s also a prolific novelist (four fantastic published novels with one audiobook sequel on top of that I still need to get) and video game developer. Seriously, check out his four-game point-and-click survival horror adventure series titled The Chzo Mythos, completely free to download off his personal website. All around cool dude. Why is this important? Every collapse of The Escapist generally retains only one constant: Yahtzee. Because Zero Punctuation is the traffic draw for the website. The Escapist would not exist anymore if not for Yahtzee.
I was a huge fan of MovieBob for a couple of years there, being the huge movie buff and generally massive nerd that I am, but his politics got in the way. MovieBob almost certainly got canned for his role in poking the bear that was GamerGate, as did Jim Sterling. While I do not wish to relitigate that here, most of the people who rose to prominence in the wake of GamerGate on either side of it are either bankrupt, in prison, and/or thoroughly discredited with a reputation in absolute shambles. MovieBob and Jim Sterling are not counted in that group. Strangely, the person who coined the term GamerGate — Adam Baldwin, a well-known but really conservative character actor who is not related to the Baldwin acting family — seemed to avoid this. MovieBob moved on to Patreon and Screen Rant before rejoining The Escapist while Jim Sterling, a jerk who really embraced the jerk side of himself, makes too much of an absolute killing per month on Patreon to ever need a real boss ever again.
With that basic background out of the way, what is MovieBob Syndrome? It is a person who ascribes far more worth and influence to themselves than they actually have. This is narcissism on steroids. It’s not really dangerous for most, especially not for MovieBob, which is why the term is named after him. A tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of 1% of people in America even know who he is. He has his rabid fanboys who think his every word is the gospel truth like most with even a modest Internet following, but he’s so insignificant in comparison to the others who suffer from the same syndrome that it fits him the best. I’m thinking of figures like Paul Krugman, Noam Chomsky, and Ron Paul here.
MovieBob thinks himself an Übermensch. For reasons I do not adequately understand. He’s a movie critic who pulls a tenth (at best) of the numbers that Yahtzee does. The reason he is such an insufferable boob is his politics of destiny. He sees himself and those who agree with him as the chosen ones. The people who should be running things and taking the world to space to explore the stars. “Philosopher King” is probably the best known term for how he sees himself. The “bumpkins” who disagree with him are why he isn’t in a starship right now. Yes, he has seriously made that argument on Twitter. He’s mostly a run-of-the-mill progressive but makes that so much worse with his view on tactics. He clearly hates comedy that “punches down” (the Critical Theory view of this nonsense term) like South Park and does not think bad tactics exist for taking down bad people, as he defines what “bad” means. In 2011, he even made the argument that if Anthony Weiner and Bill Clinton did everything they were accused of, they were still good for the cause of progressivism. Being a good person or even not being a lying scumbag who cheats on his wife is apparently not a necessary element for being a “chosen one,” it seems. His cohorts in Critical Theory rarely have such a nuanced view of figures like Thomas Jefferson or H. P. Lovecraft.
I mostly ignore him these days, but the people I follow on Twitter do bring him up in a Quote Tweet every so often and I am given a stellar reminder why I stopped paying attention to him all those years ago. That’s the best course of action: Ignore those who suffer from MovieBob Syndrome unless they actually achieve real power. And, no, a congressman who never passed any legislation outside of naming a post office in his district doesn’t count. No real damage done. But Noam Chomsky? That’s an article for another day…
If you got this far, Robert: Hello. Tip your waitress.
“MovieBob thinks himself an Übermensch. For reasons I do not adequately understand.” (emphasis in original)
Paradoxically, the world getting smaller due to the Internet means that individuals can be bigger.
It used to be that if a thousand people around the world read your column, you’d never know it, because the world is a big place and those thousand people are all over it. But with the internet the entire world is in the palm of your hand in all truth, and a thousand people who read your column are right there. And a thousand people is a lot of people to have right there with you, certainly enough to convince yourself that you’ve really got something that people want. And if you’re used to the idea that for every subscriber there’s ten listeners, well.Report
I’ve seen a handful of his discussions of movies and some of them are pretty good. For example, he explained Sucker Punch to me. (Here was my take, a million years ago. Here’s his.)
As criticism goes, I found it insightful. I understood the movie better after watching his take on it.
But then I read stuff of his like this:
And I find my jaw on the floor and my bile production increases and I get irrationally irritated and it can only be tempered by stuff like this:
And then I feel better.Report
It really says something that those Tweets have not been deleted.Report
I could eat everything on that tray in 2 days. Would I, for $3500? I don’t know. I can see $10k.Report
Man I’m really curious, do you think Paul Krugman and Noam Chomsky are insignificant?
Also could you tell me what his “Cohorts in Critical Theory” are?Report
Yeah, the idea that Noam Chomsky is “insiginifant”, at least if not for self-promotion, is a dead givewaway for a Young Person’s View. Chomsky is probably one of the least self-promoting people in American intellectual history, relying on argument rather than personality to make whatever points he wants to make. His stature – which young people are unaware of – derive from his achievements, not fluffery. That Young People nowadays completely misunderstand him certainly isn’t his fault.
Add: he may have been *wrong* about certain theses he defended, of course, but that doesn’t make him a pretender.Report
Following up on that, here’s a perfect example of Chomsky’s low-key, self-effacing nature:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dM6j7pzQA
A “self-promoter”? Come on.Report
I thought it was a pretty funny thing to say too, who could say the Chompsky :
A) Is big headed and self centered
B) Is not a significant person in his fields (and outside of them)
I feel it’s pointless to say why because he’s such a giant in 2 academic fields and in Pop PolySci. If he was a huge self promotor it still wouldn’t be relevant.
Anyone curious about what old Noam is all about, watch this interview with Brian Magee about his language philosophy: https://youtu.be/ZVXLo9gJq-U
They cover lots of areas Noam is interested though, and Magee (like in all his interviews) has clearly done his homework.
Also Paul Krugman is a Nobel Laureate, need I say more?
Still waiting to find out what MovieBob’s “Cohorts in Critical Theory” are.Report
“It is a person who ascribes far more worth and influence to themselves than they actually have. This is narcissism on steroids.”
I THINK I understand the worry (self promoters win by self promotion) but how is it possible for a person to ascribe more influence to themselves than they actually have *without* people ascribing that level of influence to them? Isn’t the blame – if one wants to ascribe it – to the people who fall for self-promotion, ie., a stunningly decadent* American culture which perpetually circles the drain?
*See: reality TV shows and a reality TV show presidencyReport
You shouldn’t dignify Movie Bob by naming a phenomenon after him. He’s a liberal evangelical, both in terms of him being preachy and in him believing in the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. The difference between him and evangelical Christians is that he views the world through pop culture, while they view it through God. And his politics are different, of course.Report