THE DEVIN'S ADVOCATE: WHO CARES ABOUT ARMOND WHITE?

 Toy Story 3, which had a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes until he dared to dislike it.

And then came the uproar. Like clockwork. People who don't understand what an opinion is have been up in arms all day, Tweeting and writing blog posts about what a monster this man is that he should break Toy Story 3's streak of positive reviews. Apparently Toy Story 3 was on track to be the most positively reviewed movie in the history of Rotten Tomatoes, which is some major achievement if you treat movies like a sporting event.

White is a critic at The New York Press, an alt-weekly that a few years ago I thought was going to become the new Village Voice. It never quite happened, and White, who was always a little... off, seems to have slowly drifted into sheer insanity. According to Rotten Tomatoes he agrees with the Tomatometer 52% of the time, which is I'm sure meaningful to someone who thinks statistics has a place in the discussion of art. The fact of the matter is that White seems to embrace movies that most folks hate while shitting on movies most folks love; this week he trashed Toy Story 3, as mentioned, and gave the awful Jonah Hex a glowing review.

So here's the thing about White: either he has awful, crazy taste or he's just fucking with you. Either way, there's a question that must be answered:

Who gives a shit about Armond White?

If he's just fucking with us, which is what many people say, then you're playing right into his plan when you get outraged that he dared, that he had the audacity!, to give a negative review to a movie you liked. If he's just fucking with us, the obvious answer is to quit paying attention, to not link to his outrageous reviews on Twitter or Fark or Reddit or whatever, to just let him howl into the night and get no response. Don't feed the trolls, we say, and this would be a prime example of that. People cry out 'How can Armond White have a job as a film critic when his opinions are like this?!?!" and the answer is "Because you keep driving traffic to his reviews every time you get up in arms that he shat upon another mainstream movie." So ignore him, and he'll go away.