Hey there, so you're probably wondering why I keep lumping Watchmojo.com with objectively bad publications such as Kotaku and Pitchfork as a list of websites to avoid throughout my site. Suffice to say that I'm not just any hater of the Canadian listicle site as if you can believe it, I was once a fan of theirs but over time grew to despise their content for a multitude of reasons. That said, obviously they're not bad people at the company, rather they're a business whose only real crime is suffocating search results on the internet due to the high amount of content they churn out no matter what the subject matter is. I bring this up because I hold no ill will to the people working at the company as individuals, rather my ire is directed towards how they suppress original content such as this website and, in some cases, even convince potential bloggers to give them their ideas to further dominate search results on the internet.
I guess we'll start with how they get their ideas for making videos as it turns out I was one of those people who would not only vote for the candidates on each list, but even gave them a suggestion for a list which they turned into a video. At the time, I was ecstatic as I received an email from the company saying that they had converted my idea of a top ten list into a video. The video in question, Top ten worst singers, a video that's often considered to be one of their worst in their entire catalogue.
To this day, I'm still credited as ONE of the people who suggested their ideas for the video, even though like I said, I was the one who came up with the suggestion with the other five people merely adding in their own candidates for the rest of the community to vote on. Also in case you were wondering, I'm credited as dolloboy92, which I guess means I can no longer hide my gender identity on this site as yes, that does make me a cis man based on other details I've revealed about myself on this site. Naturally it goes without saying that I didn't come up with the goofy choices for this list as from memory, Nicki Minaj and Britney Spears were the only two candidates I nominated for this list (even then, not for the reasons presented in the video.) I can't quite remember who else I nominated given how this video was made nine years ago at this point (at the time of writing of course) however I'm fairly certain they were all singers and not rappers (or not primarily rappers at least) and I certainly didn't lower myself to nominating the likes of Rebecca Black who even back then I didn't consider to be a real artist, Ashlee Simpson who only has one (albeit infamous) performance to go off on for her perceived lack of vocal talent, or Yoko Ono who's more of an acquired taste rather than an objectively bad singer. I bring up the ins and outs of how this video that I suggested the company to make got made to bring up just how impersonal each of their videos have always been as naturally, the commentary made in the video had to be written based on the opinions of six (in my opinion) VERY different individuals which resulted in the video's backlash, well that and the fact the candidates that made the list did so less based on their vocal talents and more based on the quality of their music, a fact that clearly went against my original suggestion for the video.
Upon watching the video for the first time, I was horrified as this was right after the joy and excitement I felt when I read my email from Watchmojo saying they converted my idea into a video. It was the last time I visited their website directly as I felt that my ideas would be misrepresented at best and butchered beyond belief at worst should I give them any more of them. That said, don't think I changed my entire identity on the internet because of my embarrassment for this video's existence, rest assured that I didn't as this incident is just one of the reasons why dolloboy92 was a humiliating time in my life and that this video is just about the only thing that will come up when googling that name. I'll just leave it at me being unemployed at the time as well as a huge Channel awesome fan, I feel that should tell you everything you need to know about me (although in case it doesn't, this was also when I first created my rateyourmusic account where I posted reviews and lists so vile that I was shadow banned on the site until my redemption ark on there from last year.) That's not to say that being a fan of Watchmojo inherently made me a bad person, rather it's the type of mindset I was in that allowed me to enjoy such shallow content as well as make a suggestion to the site which would wind up being considered one of the worst pieces of content they created. Instead of putting myself out there and sharing my opinions of things (in a way that didn't get me in the bad graces of rateyourmusic's admins) I instead relied on sending my ideas off to a company in the hopes that one day they'll agree to share it with the world, kind of like being a minor character in Disney's Wish hoping they would have their wishes granted by the villain if obviously said villain were simply sharing said wishes to a wider audience. I can't imagine how many other people have had their ideas butchered the way mine was for this video over the years, hopefully they've had a similar journey that I had and are now presenting their ideas in their own unique ways similar to how I've done over the last year.
I guess that leads me to my criticisms with the site that doesn't come from personal experience, that being that they continuously recycle older content in order to keep up with the algorithm. Now obviously I'm not saying that reusing commentary from older material is a bad thing (I mean that would be beyond hypocritical of me given I do just that throughout this site) however the issue here is that they don't even bother changing the order of the list and instead simply add new entries onto it to turn their lists from a top ten to a top twenty and in more recent videos, even a top fifty or top 100. Heck, they don't even have a different narrator half the time, meaning they just stitch the older content together with the new entries, which makes their older content completely redundant even though they don't bother taking down any of said content. I guess they only do this for videos that have been well received given how they've never bothered to even remake the video I suggested for them, let alone expand the list to include its multiple honourable mentions. Also, now that you know how they get their suggestions for the candidates for their lists, you probably realise just how impersonal the commentary they give in each of their videos truly is even though the narrators do their best to inject their personality into the scripts. Like I said, I have nothing against the people who make these videos as they're simply doing their job, rather my distain comes from the higher ups who do the bare minimum when it comes to compiling these lists as well as writing the scripts for the videos. Even people who were former fans of the site have begun to notice over the years just how formulaic their videos have always been, back in the day they were credited for helping people discover new content whereas now, they simply parrot the same talking points that EVERYONE has made for the most obvious choices for whatever topic their countdown is about.
I should also bring up the MANY spinoffs channels the site has on YouTube, basically they were created in an attempt to appeal to a certain demographic (Msmojo appeals to women, WatchmojoUK appealing to British viewers etc.) The problem here is that the content on these channels is severely limited as Msmojo only ever seems to talk about Disney products and the occasional chick flick whilst WatchmojoUK only ever brings up British media, at least the main channel has a wide diverse of topics it covers which even to this day is the channel's only saving grace. This is where the company's dominance on the internet goes from merely being widespread to straight up cynical as we're at the point where googling anything online will give you at least one result from the website, if not many results depending on how mainstream the topic is. This is made worse by the fact that they seem to have a video ready whenever a life altering event happens in the world, be it the death of a celebrity or a major sporting event. It's almost as if they have these videos on standby in order to cash in off these events, which has really gotten the channel a lot of flak from the YouTube community specifically as it's generally considered ill practice to make a listicle video around these events (particularly off of someone's death.) Going back to them recycling content, I guess this was done due to many of their older videos being rather inconsistent with each other as one video they could be praising something (we'll use "Barbie girl" as an example) only for them to heavily criticise it in another video should the content of the video be convenient for them to do so. I noticed this in the worst CGI in music videos list and the most expensive videos ever list as in the former they criticise "Barbie girl" for being a massive earworm when talking about one of its many rip-off tracks and in the latter video they praise it as a Europop masterpiece when discussing the video for Aqua's track "Cartoon heroes." Again, this goes to show how the narration on each video will widely change depending on what the candidates are and if the topic is positive or negative, further reinforcing the soulless nature of their content.
I think that's about all I have to say for this site, like I said, they're by no means an evil or even malicious company as their goal is to ultimately help normies broaden their interests in a way that doesn't come off as too biased against something that they would likely enjoy. They're definitely nothing like Kotaku who only exist to publish highly offensive articles written by high school dropouts in an attempt to capitalise on audiences prone to rage bait with the sheer amount of banner adds that pollute each of these articles (although let's face it, Kotaku and other sites like it are the only reason why their "journalists" aren't on unemployment benefits, so I'm a bit mixed on its continued existence as at least they can truthfully say they're providing jobs for the community.) Obviously, this post of mine isn't going to change Watchmojo's ways given how lucrative they've become as a business, at best I'll probably get somewhat of an apology for mangling my idea I gave them all those years ago which I think we can all agree is unnecessary at this point. With that said, I implore anyone reading this to not harass the people at Watchmojo, particularly their narrators and video editors as like I said, they're simply doing their job and are pretty good at it given how well the editing and narration is on their videos even to this day. I just hope they eventually move on to better things, or at the very least, branch out to better things as admittedly I'd be torn about staying at a job that I'm sure pays them handsomely as well as getting them far more exposure than they would get had they branched out on their own. With that said, thanks for reading this article of mine, take care and I'll see you around.
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