CinemaSins Is (Still) Terrible

There are much more pressing cultural issues in this world than some horrible YouTube channel. But one particular content creator has such a large following and an awful influence in the world that it requires attention and resistance.

CinemaSins has been slowly poisoning the well of media literacy and cinematic discussions since 2012.

With over 9,160,000 subscribers totaling more than 3.4 Billion views on their videos, the wretched hive of scum and villainy uses plot contrivances and bad faith arguments to pick apart movies at random while moving the goalpost of what they consider bad or a mistake or whatever. It produces soulless pedantic responses that hide behind weak comedy as a defense while being widely influential in how folks talk about film. They are shit.

Then, in 2017, a hero emerged in the form of bobvids, a YouTuber/Podcaster/and more who plainly laid out the case for the crimes of CinemaSins in his video “Sustaining Stupidity - Why CinemaSins is Terrible”. He had previously presented his points using specific installments in CinemaSins “Everything Wrong With…” videos (where the channel picks apart various bits of entertainment in willfully obtuse and pathetically reductive ways), making five videos that tackled the issue through the lens of each moronic entry by the noxious channel. But “Sustaining Stupidity” was bobvids’ opus, his thesis, his closing argument…he could stop watching CinemaSins!

But the Internet, like it is wont to do, always clamors for more. And these days, it’s all about the sequel (or expanded universe). However, it wasn’t just answering to the anti-CinemaSins fervor, but there were some intriguing updates that involved bobvids directly as well as examples that despite some minor acknowledgement of issues, the shitty CinemaSins was up to the same old tricks (though it repackaged a few of them). Thus the hero was called back once more into the fray and published “CinemaSins is (Still) Terrible” on January 11, 2022. It’s an even more interesting video than the previous (also great) essay because it brings bobvids behind the curtain a bit while also revealing CinemaSins’ own mentality with how they dealt with the fair criticisms.

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