Tom runs into a typical fanatic simply by mentioning that he didn't think much of the movie Ishtar. From it's entry in IMDb, it doesn't look like he was alone. In fact, I think it's safe to say that people stayed away in droves given a $55 million-dollar film that only pulled $12.7 million at the box office. Before this, I had never heard of it (we went to see Beverly Hills Cop II). You can thank Google Alerts for this sort of thing. Now anyone in the world can log onto Google, enter any words or phrases (like Ishtar, Ishtar, Ishtar Ishtar...) that they want Google to watch for, and be instantly alerted via e-mail that someone, somewhere has mentioned a topic near and dear to their heart so they can swoop in and deface some poor soul's family blog.
Don't get me wrong; Google Alerts is a great thing, and if I were head of the PR division of an organization, I would have alerts on any and every word that was even tangently related to my business as well as the names of the company, its products, the CEO, CFO, CIO, trustees, directors, president, etc. Here at Arcosanti, our PR guy has alerts for "Arcosanti", "Paolo", "Soleri", "arcology", and numerous others (hey Stefan!). But setting an alert for a twenty-year-old box office turkey so you can run all over the internet hammering on anyone that isn't as much in love with it as you are? Get a life.
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