Clickbait cliche: historical hotties

Clickbait promoters like to dust off photos of beautiful women from the past to use in sponsored articles online. Perhaps they’re catering to nostalgia. The more likely reason is that sex sells.
Previous examples of clickbait using “historical hotties” that I’ve spotlighted have included Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Montgomery, Goldie Hawn and Susan Dey.
Here are some more recent examples.

Actress Marilyn Monroe has been a clickbait favorite, at least for Taboola.

A famous photo of Jayne Mansfield meeting Sophia Loren in 1957 has cropped up as clickbait.

Audrey Hepburn received the clickbait treatment.

So has pin-up model Bettie Page, here meeting photographer and filmmaker Irving Klaw.

Some “historical hotties” used in modern clickbait are more obscure.
One Taboola article used a photo of actress Lori Saunders from the 1966 horror movie “Blood Bath.”

British model Jean Shrimpton popped up in a clickbait article on “photos not suitable for history books.” I beg to differ.

Kathy Kohner, the real-life inspiration behind fictional surfer girl Gidget, also got the clickbait treatment.

Brigitte Bardot is definitely suitable for history books

Clickbait purveyors love to use photos of French actress Brigitte Bardot from her prime.
She’s rarely identified by name in the headlines of clickbait articles. It’s a technique designed to exploit the curiosity gap in young men who aren’t familiar with the stunningly beautiful screen star.
Often the headlines say, “Rare photos not suitable for history books.” If my history books had more smoking hot babes like Bardot, I would have paid more attention.
I’ve noted how clickbait promoters like using Bardot pictures in three other articles. (Check out “Lying clickbait: Brigitte Bardot photos were never ‘classified’”, “Lying clickbait: Pretty women as the honeypot” and “Clickbait favorites: Sexy female celebrities for sponsored articles.”)
What follows are some of the latest examples of Bardot as the honeypot for clicks.

The glory of pie-to-the-face protests: A history of pieing

Earlier this week a man shoved a lemon meringue pie into the face of Qantas Airways CEO Alan Joyce while the executive was giving a speech. The assailant wanted to protest Joyce’s stance on same-sex marriage. (See photo above.)
The middle-school boy in me likes to see people in power take a pie to the kisser every now and then. Yes, the assailants should be charged with a crime, but a misdemeanor offense. Pieing someone is a dick move and the result is mostly embarrassment and a dry-cleaning bill for the target.
The pie-to-the-face gag has a long history in comedy. It’s also been picked up by professional baseball teams for post-game celebrations.
It’s one of the go-to protest moves by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
What follows are some famous recipients of a pie to the face.

Equal Rights Amendment opponent Phyllis Schlafly was hit in the face with an apple pie in New York in April 1977.

Anita Bryant, a popular singer who became a prominent U.S. gay rights opponent, was struck in the face with a pie during a television interview in Des Moines, Iowa, in October 1977.

Future French President Nicolas Sarkozy took a pie to the face in 1997 when he was mayor of Paris suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Microsoft CEO Bill Gates got a cream pie to the face in February 1998 as he headed to a meeting in Brussels.

Actor Sylvester Stallone was pied by protestors during the opening of a Planet Hollywood restaurant in Montreal in July 1998.

Economist Milton Friedman was pied at a corporate conference in San Francisco in October 1998.

Renato Ruggiero, director general of the World Trade Organization, got a custard pie thrown in his face after giving a speech at a conference in London in October 1998.

Three people hit San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown with cherry, pumpkin and tofu cream pies as he gave a speech in November 1998. The assailants were protesting the mayor’s policies on homelessness.

Canadian Human Resources Minister Pierre Pettigrew was pied in January 1999 before a news conference in Montreal.

Procter and Gamble CEO John Pepper was the target of pie-throwers at Northwestern University in 1999. The assailants from PETA were protesting the company’s animal testing.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan was hit with a pie in the face by a protester while speaking with reporters following a public forum in Carbondale, Ill., in May 2000.

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien was hit with a pie in the face by a protestor in August 2000.

Frank Loy, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, was hit in the face with a chocolate cream cake in The Hague, Netherlands, in November 2000. He was the U.S. representative at the World Climate Change Convention.

Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling received a blueberry tofu cream pie to the face in San Francisco in June 2001.

King Carl Gustaf of Sweden was hit in the face with a strawberry tart during a royal visit to the southwestern city of Varberg, Sweden, in September 2001.

Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay was hit in the face by a cream pie while at a meeting in June 2002.

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein was hit with a banana cream pie in Calgary in July 2003.

Former U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader was hit in the face with cake in August 2003 at a political event in San Francisco.

Television personality Jeremy Clarkson was hit with a banana meringue pie in September 2005 after he received an honorary degree from Oxford Brookes University. The assailant was an environmental activist.

Vogue magazine editor-in-chief Anna Wintour was hit in the face with a tofu pie in October 2005 by a PETA protestor. The protestor yelled “Fur hag!” The attack was in response to Wintour’s support for wearing fur.

Canadian Fisheries Minister Gail Shea was pied in the face during a speech in January 2010 in Burlington, Ontario, by a PETA protestor.

News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch took a shaving cream pie to the face while testifying on the phone-hacking scandal in the U.K. in July 2011.

Sahra Wagenknecht, a prominent member of Germany’s far-left Linke party, was hit in the face with a chocolate cream pie in May 2016. An anti-fascist group took the action to protest her stance on refugees.

Related articles: 

The Cultural Evolution of Pie in the Face or Pieing (HubPages; Jan. 29, 2013)

Rupert Murdoch joins pantheon of pie victims (CNN; July 20, 2011)

A photographic history of pieing (Washington Post; July 19, 2011)

Movie fans need to keep Netflix DVD business alive

I’m a movie fan so I subscribe to Netflix’s legacy DVD-by-mail service. It’s the best place to get movies on home video in one place.
Netflix is letting its DVD business fade away as it focuses on its future in streaming video. But Netflix’s streaming service is more and more about its original videos and less about theatrical Hollywood movies. That’s a good business decision but not a great development for movie fans.
It’s too bad Netflix doesn’t market its DVD service as the best service for movies. But Netflix is all about streaming now and its old DVD service is an afterthought.
Netflix had 3.94 million DVD subscribers as of March 31, down 17% from a year earlier when it had 4.74 million subscribers. Two years ago it had 5.56 million subscribers and three years ago it had 6.65 million subscribers.
You see the pattern. It’s not great.
I can only hope that there’s a solid base of movie fans who will keep the subscriber rolls from dipping much more.

Ode to the Netflix DVD rental queue

Back in the days of Blockbuster stores and home-video rentals, I used to keep a written list of movies I wanted to watch. It was better than trying to remember all the titles and walk through the store aisles looking for something of interest.
Then along came Netflix DVD rentals by mail. With the Netflix queue, I could add all the movies from my list, even ones that hadn’t been released yet. I no longer had to keep a physical list.
But with the video business moving to streaming services, I’m again having to keep a list of things I want to watch (actually I store them as bookmarks in a folder in my web browser). That’s because some movies and TV series are not being released on DVD any more. And Netflix streaming doesn’t have a save feature for videos not on their service.
There has never been a more confusing time to be a TV viewer looking for good shows to watch. Record numbers of TV series are being produced and there’s been an explosion of streaming video services with original content. Those online-only channels (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, etc.) are in addition to the traditional broadcast and cable networks.
There’s no one place to keep track of all the TV shows and movies I’d like to watch. For a while, the Netflix DVD rental queue offered the solution. But not anymore.
I have subscriptions to Netflix and Amazon Prime online video services, so my Netflix streaming queue contains shows like “Stranger Things” and “The OA,” while my Amazon queue has “Man in the High Castle” and others.
I don’t have Hulu, but would like to watch “Difficult People” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.” I also don’t have CBS All Access, but will want to watch “Star Trek: Discovery” when it premieres. Ideally those shows will be released on DVD so I can watch them through Netflix DVD. Otherwise, I might have to subscribe to those services for a month and binge watch.
I get my Showtime shows such as “Homeland” and likely the “Twin Peaks” revival via Netflix DVD, but they’re months late. The same goes for BBC America’s “Orphan Black.” I currently subscribe to HBO for “Game of Thrones” and “Westworld,” but I might cut that service to save money.
The lack of organization in online video is one of the big failed promises of digital content.
Some services have cropped up to try to solve the problem, including Can I Stream It?, JustWatch and InstantWatcher, but none provide the ideal solution of a unified viewing queue.

Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic scores are not hurting movies

Hollywood producer and director Brett Ratner recently made headlines for blaming review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes for disappointing box office returns for Hollywood movies.
“The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes. I think it’s the destruction of our business,” Ratner said at the Sun Valley Film Festival in March.
Ratner said moviegoers focus on a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score rather than reading thoughtful reviews.
While consumers likely are using Rotten Tomatoes scores to judge whether to spend money on seeing a movie in the theater, that doesn’t mean the service is bad for the business. It is simply one tool consumers have at their disposal.
I have liked many movies that received poor scores from Rotten Tomatoes. And I have hated movies with good scores on the service (some examples: “Birdman” and “High-Rise.”)
Just as important is a viewer’s personal preferences and understanding the biases of professional film critics.
That said, Rotten Tomatoes and rival Metacritic do provide a good directional indicator for whether people will like a movie or not.

Related articles:

Hollywood Producer Blames Rotten Tomatoes for Convincing People Not to See His Movie (Vanity Fair)

5 reasons Brett Ratner’s Rotten Tomatoes complaints are garbage (The Verge)

Netflix’s new thumbs-up, thumbs-down reviews are worthless

Netflix is taking a lot of flak for changing its movie review system, which is tied to its video recommendation engine. Instead of rating movies on a scale of one to five stars, streaming subscribers now are asked to rate a movie as “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.”
While the switch is likely to increase engagement among users, the data it produces will be next to worthless.
Giving a movie a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” provides no gradation that would help a good video recommendation algorithm. It does not distinguish between a movie you love vs. one you kind of liked. The same goes for movies you hate vs. those you just didn’t think were very good.
I suspect one of the reasons that Netflix made this change was to take away an indicator of how much lousy content the service has. With star ratings gone, every video is on equal footing when it’s presented to the viewer.
Fortunately Netflix’s U.S.-only DVD-by-mail service is still using the five-star rating system. At least for now.

Related reading:

Netflix users already hate its new rating system (New York Post)

Angry Customers Give Netflix Thumbs Down (Seeking Alpha)