I’ve been very critical of the popular horror website Bloody Disgusting in the past. They have this nasty habit of posting wild rumors as “scoops” or “exclusives” and then after an easy bit of digging around for the truth, the scoops are exposed as the junk that they are. Now, this doesn’t happen all the time, mind you. It’s not like every single scoop they get is wrong, but for me anyway, it happens with alarming regularity.

Case in point: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Next Film to be Horror!!!!!

Just looking at the retarded way the accompanying “news story” is presented should show you how bogus the “story” is. The article starts out with the words “This is quite possibly the biggest news we’ve ever reported in the history of Bloody-Disgusting.” It goes on to mention a “well trusted insider” told them Anderson is “seriously contemplating” making a horror film. I’ll hold up there for a second. Compare that to the declarative news headline and already I smell something fishy. If that didn’t raise your suspicion flags, perhaps the next line will:

“As of right now the project is just a thought that has yet to be put down on paper, but hopefully in the next few months or so a decision will be made.”

Like mentally-handicapped people to a short bus, every horror news site on the planet seemed to pick up this article and spread this rumor like a plague. Funny thing is, nobody asked Anderson:

“News to me. I thought I just made a horror film…Wish I had something to report, but I’m dry as a bone…pta”

This goes to the heart of why I hate Bloody-Disgusting. Yeah, yeah, I know a lot of people like them, and I know they claim to be the most popular horror site on the internet, but I, for one, refuse to visit their site. These guys pretty consistently run bogus news stories and it just pisses me off. Look, it’s easy for an internet site to get “duped” every now and then or run with a rumor because they are overly excited, everybody has done it. It’s another thing altogether to make a headline stating in a declarative fashion that Anderson is making a horror film. You know what bullshit like this does for them? It gets them visitors to their site. When tons of other horror sites feel the need to spread the “news”, all those people eventually find their way to Bloody-Disgusting. It’s a good business model, I suppose. Release some explosive headline every few weeks, get lots of visitors, and then not care when everyone forgets about it.

I’m not saying that a site can’t post a rumor. That’s just the nature of the beast when it comes to the internet. But in my mind, there should be some sort of “ethics” here. State up front that it is nothing more than a rumor and that until more facts come out, the news should be taken with a grain of salt. I mean, if we here at Deadlantern started making bogus news stories (a well placed source in Colorado told me Sam Raimi is secretly filming Evil Dead 4 right now!!!), I’d expect our readers and listeners to say “you guys are stupid. I’m going elsewhere”. If you enjoy Bloody-Disgusting, more power to you. For me, this site has lost all credibility and they lost it a long time ago. You would think that after the first 20 times they’ve been proven wrong, they’d tighten their standards. Apparently not. I’ll continue to be the one horror fan shouting at how lame they are from the dark corner.

Filed under: Bloody-Disgusting is Retarded, Commentary, News