Just more of an incoherent shower thought of mine, but I think the line between convenience and necessity is a lot more blurry than many want to admit, and it's hard to see in most cases. We would all almost certainly agree that DoorDash and UberEats, Netflix and Disney Plus, various "smart" gadgets like fridges with screens that connect to the internet and all that are firmly in the convenience column.

But I wonder if some other things stretch the line too far, and people have basically been backed into a corner, complicitly or not, by corporations to a point where some things that might be seen as a convenience in the abstract, functionally are not. Like banks, utility companies, leasing management companies and such all switching to the "you have to use our app" model and there simply no longer being a way you can actually engage in normal life without a smartphone. "Dumb phones" don't even exist anymore, as the FCC shut down the 3G network years ago, and all 'dumb phones' that exist now, even ones that look like clunky flip phones from 2005, are actually just Android smartphones made to look simpler.

There is the ideal of "well all you need is 40 acres of land to farm and hunt your own food, build a cabin with your bare hands and an axe, and read Cicero by lanternlight, and any more than that is just you being a soft faggot", and while that sentiment has some value, it's functionally impossible for most people. The average person cannot afford to simply buy a big chunk of land and live off grid forever. Most people do have to live in the modern world with cars and phones and banks and all the rest, or they will die under a bridge somewhere.

My main sentiment is that there is often this "well, I'm way more of a hardass than you, I don't need all those fancy toys with screens and avocado toast and streaming services" attitude from certain segments of the Right, which is then used to totally dismiss the hard reality that most people do have to engage with the modern world as it is, not as we wish it would be, and will never have the financial leeway to avoid it. If you only make X dollars a month at your job, you're living in an apartment, not buying a house on several acres. If the people who own your apartment say "you have to pay rent via the smartphone app", well, you're paying rent via the smartphone app, which means you have to have a smartphone. You cannot simply say "no, I refuse". That way lies death under a bridge. Your refusal just means you're shut out from the things that are necessities like shelter, food, clean water, etc. Necessities are necessities, and conveniences are conveniences, but sometimes necessities are locked behind a convenience gate, if that makes any sense.

I wonder if anyone else has noticed this or has any thoughts on these ideas in specific or in general.

Amendment XXVIII Section 1.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, effects, communications, information, and other private affairs against unreasonable searches, seizures, surveillance, and invasions of privacy shall not be violated.

Neither the United States, nor any State, nor any political subdivision or instrumentality thereof, shall evade the limitations of this Constitution by directing, requesting, encouraging, compensating, contracting with, coordinating with, or otherwise causing any private person, corporation, organization, foreign government, or other non-governmental actor to collect, retain, analyze, search, monitor, or disclose information where such conduct would constitute an unreasonable search or seizure if performed directly by the government.

Information obtained in violation of this Article, and any evidence or investigative leads derived therefrom, shall not be admitted in any judicial, administrative, legislative, or executive proceeding, nor serve as the basis for warrants, arrests, prosecutions, or other governmental action.

Section 2.

Neither the United States nor any State shall acquire, purchase, license, compel, or otherwise obtain access to records, communications, location information, behavioral information, biometric information, or other personal information in bulk or through generalized or indiscriminate collection, except pursuant to standards consistent with this Constitution and directed toward identified persons, places, accounts, or things for which individualized legal justification exists.

The constitutional protections secured by this Article shall not be diminished solely because information is possessed, stored, processed, transmitted, or maintained by another person or entity.

Section 3.

Nothing in this Article shall prohibit:

(a) any person from voluntarily reporting specific observations, evidence, or firsthand knowledge of actual or suspected criminal activity;

(b) law enforcement officers from receiving such reports, interviewing witnesses, requesting voluntary cooperation, or conducting investigations otherwise consistent with this Constitution;

(c) private persons or entities from maintaining security measures for their own persons or property and voluntarily providing information relating to a particular event or investigation;

(d) disclosures otherwise required pursuant to a warrant, subpoena, court order, or other lawful process consistent with this Constitution.

Section 4.

Congress and the several States shall have power to enforce this Article by appropriate legislation consistent with its provisions.

Rotten Tomatoes made a major change to how audience scores were calculated back in 2019. Many people don't realize what happened, but this single change is why The Odyssey score currently sits at a glowing 97%, yet standardizing the data properly reveals it is actually 56%.

The discrepancy comes down to how RT creates the "Verified Audience" score versus the "All Audience" score.

The Background: "Push" vs. "Pull" Before 2019, RT used a "pull" mechanic: an unverified user had to actively decide to leave a review, log in or create an account, navigate to the movie page, and submit their rating.

After 2019, RT shifted the primary score to a "push" notification via ticket processors like Fandango. A ticket buyer walking out of the theater gets a prompt: "Did you like the movie? Tap 1 to 5 stars." They tap a star, and they're done.

Removing UI friction is fine on paper, but making "Verified Audience" the default score under the new "Popcornmeter" branding changed everything. (And yes, given how predictable the resulting score inflation was, this was likely deliberate obfuscation by RT.)

How to See the Real Numbers Yourself Fortunately, the old "pull" audience data is still sitting right inside RT's page source code—if you know where to look:

Open The Odyssey on Rotten Tomatoes. Right-click anywhere on the page and select View Page Source (or press Ctrl+U / Cmd+U). Press Ctrl+F and search for media-scorecard-json. A few lines down, you'll see a JSON data block that looks like this (the likedCount and notLikedCount are what we want):

{"audienceAll":{"certifiedFresh":"certified","averageRating":"4.6","bandedRatingCount":"5,000+ Ratings", "likedCount":7858,"notLikedCount":646, "reviewCount":1719,"score":"92"...}

{"audienceVerified":{"certifiedFresh":"certified","averageRating":"4.8","bandedRatingCount":"5,000+ Verified Ratings", "likedCount":7360,"notLikedCount":258, "reviewCount":1126,"score":"97"...}

Extracting the True "Pull" Score To find the actual sentiment of independent web users, we just need to isolate the unverified votes from the combined "All Audience" pool:

Verified ("Push") Score: 7,360 likes / (7,360 + 258 total) = 96.6% (This is the 97% Popcornmeter score RT displays prominently for The Odyssey).

Unverified ("Pull") Score:

Unverified Likes: 7,858 - 7,360 = 498 Unverified Dislikes: 646 - 258 = 388 Calculation: 498 / (498 + 388) = 498 / 886 = 56.2% (This is the more valid audience score for The Odyssey) Summary Out of 886 active Rotten Tomatoes users who – at the time of this writing – navigated to the site on their own to rate The Odyssey, only 498 (56%) rated it positively.

The current generated 97% score displayed so prominently is simply an artifact of a push notification pipeline heavily biased toward opening-weekend ticket buyers.

Source: /r/kotakuinaction