Last week, Netflix broke with years of tradition and revealed his 10 most popular movies—Complete with the number of people who have transmitted each title. It was interesting, because it had never really happened before and because it allowed the general public to draw some theories as to what type of content appeals to Netflix users the most (for example, most movies had a big-name star). The problem was that Netflix provided the ranking and numbers themselves, which means there was no way to verify anything, so the entire list was only slightly more informative than when Netflix insists that something is popular without providing any number at all (since he did in 2018 with Sparkly, a film that did not even appear on the list despite the success that Netflix said). Interesting? Yes. Informative? Hey
Now Netflix has decided to go ahead and undermine their entire roster, revealing, once again, why it really doesn’t mean a thing when streaming platforms brag about how popular something is without endorsing it. On Friday, Netflix tweeted that Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The old guard (starring Charlize Theron as a member of a team of immortal soldiers) is “among Netflix’s top 10 most popular movies” and is “on its way” to be broadcast to 72 million users in its first four weeks on the site.
The old guard was not on the top 10 list, despite the fact that 72 million would rank it only in the top five, meaning that they got 30 or 40 million views on Thursday night somehow and the list was fired, or the list was wrong (or obsolete) in the first place. So what was the point?
Well, advertising, obviously. Instead of commercials, tweeting “Hey, this new thing has a famous star and it’s very popular!” It should be a good way to attract people to specific content, even if it slightly undermines what you were looking for with your previous reference to popular stuff. It’s not that the numbers are necessarily wrong or that none of this is vile, it is useful to know what is really happening here, which means that basically nothing is happening here.
[[[[via Variety]
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