The news that Warner Bros. has purchased a movie pitch as the result of posts made on Reddit shouldn’t come as a surprise to many people; if there’s one thing that social media has proven over the years, it’s that it exists as fodder for the creation of “mainstream” media like movies, television shows and music—as well as numerous news stories along the line of “OMG The Internet Has Made A TV Show – Now It Is Real!”
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What these stories—and, almost all reporting about the Reddit deal, which nonetheless consistently finds time to mention that the writer behind the Reddit posts is a two-time Jeopardy champion—fail to mention, however, is that almost all of these “mainstream” media projects that spin off from social media posts/personalities/whatever are appallingly bad, and seemingly the result of an executive or several saying “The kids like the internet, right? I don’t like it, but what the hell, let’s give it a shot.” Don’t believe me? Here are the greatest hits of the Social Media/Old Media collaboration machine.
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