To everyone who has been delightedly posting about “Snakes On A Plane” for months now

Uncategorized 1 Minute

This is the most successful “viral” marketing campaign since The Blair Witch Project. You bought the “internet rumor.” You bought the “they wanted to change it but Samuel L. Jackson insisted on the title.” You made your own media and distributed it. You posted about it on the Internet over and over and over.

Because you’ll enjoy anything with a detached sense of superiority, you made yourselves part of the strategy. Because black people saying “motherfucker” is funny, and because cheesy horror movies that scare people inferior to you are funny, and because you’ve been neotenized by pop culture irony into being perpetually 12 years old, you got trolled into the street team for a midnight movie and made some Chads and Brads and Thads in shiny shirts very, very, rich.

You deserve the decoder ring, the glow-in-the-dark badge, and the build-it-yourself clubhouse now. You ate all four hundred boxes of Froot Loops.

Homage to springheel_jack for the phrase “consumer Stockholm Syndrome,” which describes this phenomenon perfectly.

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52 thoughts on “To everyone who has been delightedly posting about “Snakes On A Plane” for months now”

      1. I agree with your viral marketing points but still… If I see it, it won’t be ironically. I will enjoy it the same way I enjoyed “Rock N Roll High School”

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      2. oh that is sad…
        I am not sure that anyone should admit that they knew of Rock N Roll High School, let alone went to see it, and even less that they enjoyed it….

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      3. Re: oh that is sad…
        OMG, are you kidding? RNR High School is the best B movie ever. I feel sad for anyone who can’t appreciate it.
        Take your punk hate somewhere else.

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      4. Re: oh that is sad…
        Wrong, Wrong, Wrongg!!!
        Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER!!!!!
        Anything less and the Iranian Flying Saucers will return!!!

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      6. Re: oh that is sad…
        wow….
        actually, republican veteran, but I guess in this day and age when the great war hero’s are karl rove and his ilk, I guess being called a stoner is not a bad thing? Stoner did invent the M-16 and other field equipage…
        or am I missing the jab there…

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      10. Re: oh that is sad…
        Wow…. that has got to suck…
        Personally given my choices, I have opted to curl up in a ball and embrace Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas…..
        The Bats, The Bats…..

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  4. Cynicisms On A Internets
    Enough’s enough! I’ve had it with this mothafuckin cynicism on this mothafuckin internet.
    Listen up people! We need to put a barrier between ourselves and the cynicism!

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  5. The best part is…. it’s not like some internet moron picked up on this independently and started the “virus” as they’d have you believe. Samuel L Jackson promoted this movie over a year ago on Conan O’Brien when he was there to promote another movie. He said he was lobbying to call the movie what it was… snakes… on a plane. Not some catchy title, just call the movie what it is since it will probably stink anyway. Now, knowing that Conan O’Brien is just an Entertainment show used for PR/Marketing, we can see it was a well calculated move. Now it’s a shitty movie with a gimmick instead of just a shitty movie.
    I love how the internet works in waves. The superiority complex of the “in-crowd” declaring whats cool is soon replaced with the superiority complex of the next “in-crowd” that declares that X fad is “like SO OVER AND DONE”

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    1. It’s accelerating to the point that we can experience in-group exclusivity, consumer anticipation, excitement, disappointment, cynical rejection, nostalgia, ironic revival, and a return to in-group exclusivity all at the same time now.

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      1. “You know what’s coming back? Everything. And then it’s all going away – for good.”
        That’s as close as I can remember to Trow talking about the ever-shortening cycles of decade retro. In “In the Context of No Context,” which I suspect you’ve read, but if you haven’t, I will drive out to your house and hand you.
        Thanks for this, by the way.

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  6. Seeing that movie was the crowning achievement of my life, and everything I’ve ever done, led up to that night.
    That glorious, liquor-drenched night.

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  8. Hahahaha!! This was a great entry! Seeing as i’m in Japan i’ll probably never actually get the chance to see Snakes on a Plane unless it somehow makes it here. As people are so fond of quoting from the movie, I have indeed put a barrier between myself and the snakes. It’s called the ocean, and the only copies of it i’ll see floating around here will most likely be bootlegs and newly arrived Snakes on a Plane fanbois!

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  10. Hate to be the lone voice of dissent here, but I don’t see why it’s a bad thing to find this movie, and the phenomena surrounding it, funny. Sure, of course there are people getting rich off it somewhere out there. It’s a Hollywood movie; what else could one possibly expect? That has no bearing on whether or not it’s an enjoyable meme for those participating.
    Honestly, I think you’re phrasing this in awfully dire terms; it’s a pretty light-hearted thing without a lot of significance.
    Respectfully, &c.
    fimmtiu

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    2. I’m a little ambivalent, but I think I’m with this guy. I’d be an elitist to deny the pleasure of in-group exclusivity to the masses. One just has to accept that good jokes, (good songs, etc.), are likely to get run into the ground, especially now with everyone online; it’s just things taking their natural course. I heard Hey Ya a few too many times in 2004, but it was an acceptable price to pay for a catchy-as-all-hell song.
      Maybe it hinges on one’s tolerance for Samuel L. Jackson. I used to think he was a phoney and a shameful, updated variation of minstrel exploitation. But of all things, my opinion of him turned around after seeing his performance in the underrated movie Changing Lanes. (That movie also turned around my opinion of Ben Affleck — maybe I was just feeling generous that day.) Who has the true superiority complex: the guy ironically enjoying camp, or the guy who looks down on that guy? (This isn’t entirely a rhetorical question — I’m not sure if I know.)
      (As with , this is all meant in good faith.)

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  17. Thank you!
    I have no desire to ever see that movie and all my stupid friends are shitting themselves over it.
    I am glad to hear that someone whose opinions I respect feels the same way about this snake business.

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  18. One of the joys of living in a pre-modern society:
    I told a friend of mine about this movie, and he said (in Bislama) “Snakes on the plane? Yeah, that would scare me. But centipedes are worse.”

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  19. Oh please, motherfucker. 🙂 Talk about pretentious. Snakes on a Plane is just a stupid movie, like Dude, Where’s My Car? and Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle. It’s just idiotic popcorn fun. You either like that sort of thing or you don’t. You seem to be enjoying a “detached sense of superiority” by assuming that everyone who chooses to see it is a PR tool and that you are above it all, taking in the bigger reality that none of us in the movie seats could possibly understand. Eat some popcorn, yell at the screen, and have some fun, motherfucker. 😉

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    1. We’re all so badass when we’re anonymous
      Oh please, motherfucker. Talk about anonymous coward. Motherfucker. 🙂
      I’ll like what I want. I don’t like Harold and Kumar, Dude Where’s My Car, or you. Because I don’t have to. That’s what we mean by “taste.” I don’t have to like everything.
      Pretentious means pretending to like what you don’t, and needing some justification for liking what you think you shouldn’t. I don’t like that shit. I find it to be: shit. And I have no guilty pleasures, because there is no taste police. The taste police is in your head, like the dream police.
      Go back and read. I didn’t say anyone was a PR tool for seeing a movie. The PR tools are the people who’ve been hyping a movie on the Internet thinking they were all part of some grassroots paradigm-busting Internet participatory media revolution when they were, in fact, at the bottom of an unpaid advertising pyramid scheme.

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  20. oh, it’ll get worse
    just think of all the $X on a plane sequels there are going to be….brace yourself.
    It’s coming to helsinki in a artsy film festival, not in wide release…go figure. I guess the movie selection around the world this year is even worse than previously feared.

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    1. I didn’t say the movie was. I said the publicity campaign was.
      Ever notice that starting a comment with “Um,” or “uh,” makes anyone an instant asshole?

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  23. What did you think?
    To begin with, that I am not a problem-one on my set of problems, which developed as a result of depression and I can never escape from it, precisely vybirayus for a couple of days and then she returns …
    … laugh, I have a child, almost two old. VERY difficult child, from birth has gipervozbudimostyu (most likely because of the small generic trauma, neurology). I love VERY her baby, and fanatically madly, BUT … since she was born, my life has become a nightmare. My life, full of freedom, has ended. Maybe I was not ready for this, I do not represent that of a child may be difficult NASTOLKO. Typically, children godiku to become more calm, but my daughter all of these 2-year daily from morning until night nerves treplet me – it applies to a day, vizzhit, screaming, crying and zakatyvaet siteriki on any issue and without … I slvshaniya standing and waiting her pony vizgov became hysterical woman probably just nerves or to a feature … I am constantly opdavlennoe mood .. I began to suffer from insomnia, about 3-4 nights straight, but woke with such feeling, and that is not asleep (although we prosypaemsya in 11). Woke with a patient’s head, depressed and with the understanding that a new day of nothing but
    yelling and Hysterical not bring my child ……… Even when docha not crying and behaves jail (sometimes), I still suppressed …
    In fact that 8 months ago I dispersed with her husband, simple ovystavila him for the door … it was impossible to live together, the permanent zadvigi were inexcusable … but despite all this, I very much miss it, and one very seriously. mom helps, live together now, but still serious …
    All the time feel loneliness, I need a man to life, but I can not find anyone yet, as I am emotionally drained and in a form with someone familiar unrealistic … everything seemed to me a monster …
    this move as a black stripe??
    P.S. Please administrator substitute.livejournal.com. If the thread is not to be in category this, I ask you to move my thread to the correct category.

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