Stan Twitter is wild, and fewer fandoms have been as consistently intense as that of Lady Gaga. Now, a report has unveiled what could be one of their most audacious schemes yet: an allegedly co-ordinated Twitter campaign dedicated to spreading bad reviews of Tom Hardy‘s new film, Venom.
Let’s back up. Lady Gaga plays a leading role in A Star Is Born, the upcoming musical which has already garnered some serious critical buzz. It’s her first starring role in a dramatic film, and by all accounts so far, it’ll further cement her place in the pop culture canon.
The problem, as Lady Gaga fans seem to see it, is that A Star Is Born opens in US cinemas on October 5. The same day as Venom.
While you’d think there would already be a pretty clear market separation between moviegoers who like earthy musicals and big-budget superhero extravaganzas, there seems to be fear among the Little Monsters that Venom will pip A Star Is Born at the box office, rendering Lady Gaga’s silver-screen showing moot.
Social media users began noticing a slew of short and overwhelmingly negative reviews popping up on Twitter, many of which included references to the competing film.
BuzzFeed News picked up on the phenomenon, and singled out one tweet which appeared to have been copied and pasted extensively across the site.
https://twitter.com/altjuann/status/1047013765202481153
Other users then began compiling the cloned tweets, insinuating that something very strange was happening in the fandom.
Interesting #Venom pic.twitter.com/nys2tQ5fQa
— Theo the Snyder Bot 🇨🇵 (@SnyderBot463) October 2, 2018
The outlet then spoke to the woman behind @altjuann, who eventually admitted that while she is a Lady Gaga fan, she simply stole the tweet from a mutual follower as a kind of joke – and that the whole thing snowballed from there.
https://twitter.com/altjuann/status/1047079957208469504
Other similar tweets seem to have hijacked the original’s formula, but a closer look at the accounts shows they’re hardly serious – or unbiased.
https://twitter.com/SaygeSinclair/status/1047240174047023104
https://twitter.com/SaygeSinclair/status/1047244226852003842
https://twitter.com/undertheskiin/status/1047201374633648129
https://twitter.com/undertheskiin/status/1046818794382020608
Extremely disappointed with the let down that #Venom was 😣 One of the films I was most excited for turned out to be the worst film. Hate to say that considering I am the biggest Venom fan… Looks like i’ll be taking my family to #AStarIsBorn instead
— amaury (@acidhunk) October 2, 2018
October is gonna be SUCH a good month for films! “A Star is Born” starring Lady Gaga is coming out and so is “HALLOWEEN” starring Mariah Carey 😍 I can’t wait!
— amaury (@acidhunk) September 26, 2018
But one other twitter user told BuzzFeed News Lady Gaga fans were actually creating dummy accounts to spread the bad reviews in a very legitimate attempt to tank Venom.
It’s all mad, and it’s already caused a backlash among some Venom fans. We humbly suggest having a cuppa, a lie down, and watching these two trailers so you can get a feel for both films away from the machinations of chaos-hungry trolls:
