Letters: 'The Force Awakens,' Nazis, and Your Website Sucks on Mobile

Merry Christmas, dear readers! We hope you all got a BB-8!

My, what a busy week. Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened last week, and we loved it. Then we thought about it and didn't love it as much anymore. More about that in a minute.

What else happened?

Let's talk about us

We hung out with a bunch of transhumanists and made a podcast out of it. Motherboard teamed up with the EFF for Terraform. We rounded up the hottest space porn of 2015, the best newly-discovered extinct species of 2015, the apps we actually used in 2015, and all the full moon Christmases for the last 2000 years. We talked to Vint Cerf about Bank of America being attacked by refrigerators [VIDEO].

This is important

Best Buy turned the $10 action figure into a $120 Wi-Fi enabled piece of crap and internet freedom is actively dissolving in America. The error code for censorship has been standardized, but there is no guarantee governments will use it.

Top hits

There were a few stories that got a lot of attention this week. This piece on how police dogs are being turned into cybernetic hunters. This personal essay about having your mom surveill your phone conversations and working with the police to bust your drug dealers. Meanwhile, Emanuel Maiberg joined a Destiny dance crew.

Motherboard senior editor Brian Merchant wrote a spoiler-laden review of The Force Awakens and called it "the least interesting Star Wars yet." This was a contentious position to take, and we received many letters, as well as many Facebook comments, from readers who vehemently disagreed. "I have never ever gotten more mail from an article," Brian said. "Not even climate change deniers are this persistent." We also heard from people who felt the same way. Brian's inbox turned into "a support group" for people who didn't like the film, he said.

Here are some of the representative letters. Some have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Subject: Need to get those clicks baby

What gets the most clicks? An article about Star Wars? Nah, too many of those. A TFA article? Nah. An article criticising TFA? Yes, definitely!

Typical VICE hipster.

By the by, Star Wars is not Science-Fiction, it's Space Opera. Idiot.

-shamblesz

Subject: Your review of TFA!

BULLSHIT! it was a nostalgic homage' to the original trilogy!

-Kevin Kilmer

Subject: Episode VII Motherboard Article

Mr. Merchant,

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Your article on motherboard was a virtual transcription of the rant that issued forth from my lips immediately following a viewing of this picture.

So many people are raving about this new Star Wars, and I couldn't understand why. I thought that, perhaps, I had gone into it with my standards set too high, and my expectations too low. However, you have validated my perception of this picture.

I think the fangasm reviews are the result of audiences so desperately wanting to enjoy a new Star Wars installment, that they willed themselves to like it, simply because it was NOT the prequels. Like you, I craved more expository dialogue, more political intrigue, akin to the original trilogy and the prequels.

I'll step back from the soap box, but thank you, again, for your elegant and HONEST review of Episode VII. At least I'll always have the originals!

Sincerely,

A Crestfallen Star Wars Fan

-Daniel Rahl

Subject: Thank you so much

Dear Mr. Merchant,

Thank you so much for your take on Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I've felt like a stranger in a strange land the past four days… my existential problems with the film have mostly been laughed at by people who think I'm too cynical, too into Star Wars or too old. Now I can say I'm not alone! Can I just include the texts of two tweets I sent after I saw the film opening night:

"BY FAR the weirdest part of all of this… I almost like… Appreciate the prequels more???? WTF? I don't understand this feeling. At least the prequels like tried something and totally failed versus trying nothing and like kinda succeeding at not sucking totally?"

And…

"I just think it's the culmination of the age of the reboot. All that's bad and all that's good. It's like a facsimile of an experience. It's kinda blowing my mind. It's like a non-experience experience."

Anyway, thanks for the article. It'll help me sleep better at night.

-Michael Dow

Hi Brian,

Having read your article on vice, I feel that you have summed up my own thoughts on the film perfectly and it is a shame that a lot of beloved franchises are following the marvel way of doing things! Having come out of the film myself only two days ago, I felt there was something missing with it and while this is regrettable, I'm glad others felt the same.

Furthermore to add to your point about how his film lacked an original story, I also felt the bad guy was not bad enough! His look with the mask on and voice was cool but as soon as he took the mask off, he just seemed like a moody teenager with parenting issues. By taking the mask off, it also humanised him and seemed too normal looking to be an evil guy. He was also too easily fought off towards the end by a completely inexperienced Rey. Didn't it take Luke like 3 films to master the force and with help from Yoda?!

While I do agree that JJ. Abrams has done a great job with all things visual, it all felt a bit too rushed. It felt like a film caught between wanting to be a standalone film and then part of a trio. I was left wanting more slow parts of the film with which to build the new characters up and warm to them more.

There are a few other things I would mention but was just writing this email to acknowledge what you had done so cheers!

-Charlie Hewitt

Subject: Your Star Wars review

Mr. Merchant,

Apologies in advance for any errors- I'm writing this at 4:00am EST.

Your review of The Force Awakens perfectly summed up what I've been trying to articulate. I saw it on the 17th, and was hugely disappointed, then again on the 18th, and was disappointed again.

I wish there was a way to temper the overwhelming financial success this is going to be, and prove that there is still a market for original movies with original plots, and a big enough one to be viable. But I guess nobody wants to see a new star wars, just the old ones remastered by somebody other than Lucas.

Thanks again, and happy non-denominational holidays,

-Jonathan Karpatkin

Staff writer Jordan Pearson wrote a story about Adam Guerbuez, a former spammer who was sued by Facebook for $873 million and is restarting his career in Bitcoin. What we didn't know, until we received several letters from readers, was that Guerbuez has dallied with white power hate groups in the past. We updated the story with this detail, which Guerbuez admits, and regret that this significant information was not included in the initial story. Here is one of the letters we got:

Subject: Article

Hi,

In regards to today's article: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-spammer-sued-by-facebook-for-873m-is-seeking-redemption-in-bitcoin

In addition to all of his past things like being a neo-nazi racist and assisting in the death of a homeless man, there are shady things he is doing even as recently as this week (behind closed doors). He is currently selling users membership to his "private bitcoin trading group." This has a cost of over $2300 at the time of this writing (5 btc). Through this group, he publicly boasts that he sells insider trading information. The whole thing is one giant ponzi to support his own personal trading habits, as well as make people talk about him on twitter.

To confirm this, it wouldn't take anything more than for you to make a brand new anonymous twitter account and send him a message asking for details on how to enter the group.

Adam also has twitter spambots that auto retweet/favorite all of the posts that he wants promoted. Leveraging public media mentions, including the article you posted today allows him to not only boost his ego, but he can leverage them by using the press as examples of why people should send him money.

Lastly, people that have called him out on things over voice chat are personally attacked with DDoS attacks, as well as having adam's bots attempt to repeatedly login with their email address to a plethora of accounts in order to cause annoyance and account lockouts.

The list could go on, but ultimately Adam is a terrible human being, and is doing very small things to try and cover up all of the shady things he is and has done. Main stream media mentions like yours only further the problem and will cause more individuals to get hurt.

I am and will continue to be a Vice supporter, but you really dropped the ball on this one.

-Collin LaHay

There is a very talented, dedicated team working on making Motherboard more usable on all platforms. Unfortunately, in the meantime, some experiences are not ideal. We apologize and we do appreciate letters like this, especially if you include a screenshot. We forward all of them to our product team.

Subject: Your site is unreadable

Do you know your website is completely unreadable because of all the stupid ads. Try to read this on an iPhone. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-machine-successfully-predicted-the-hit-dance-songs-of-2015?utm_source=mbtwitter#

-Wim Bakkeren

This reader did not indicate which wind turbine article they were referring to, but it was probably this photo tour. This reader's concern was outside the scope of this piece, but the fact that wind turbines are not always welcomed by

Subject: Wind Turbine Article

I am one of the many people that you didn't interview that was forced to live next to 112 wind turbines that surround my house.

The C02 savings that you quote are based on "installed capacity" not actual capacity factor… Big difference. And none of those figures have been proven. Those figures also don't include the massive cranes that are needed to replace expensive gearboxes or replace towers that have caught fire or when needed to replace defective or worn out blades. Or the constant transportation and delivery of repair parts, because the turbines are constantly in need of replacement parts.

You did not mention one word about the hundreds of thousands of bird deaths due to spinning wind turbine blades.

Water? This project (Ocotillo Wind Energy Facility) consumed 3 times the water originally estimated. They used over 150 acre feet of water during construction.

You didn't mention the bright red blinking lights that won't allow us to view the recent meteor showers in the background. Or allow us to sit on our own front porch because the red lights are an irritant and a constant annoyance.

You didn't mention the billions and billions of taxpayer dollars that are needed to support these monsters. Without the continuous welfare the wind industry would die. Did you know that Wind developer CEO's are bonuses millions of dollars.

Did you know that there is no accountability within the wind industry? They promise a certain amount of power per year, get the cash or credits even though they very seldom generate what they promised.

Did you know that most fossil fuel plants still operate? Did you know that there are many new fossil fuel facilities being built just to support the wind industry because wind turbines are too unreliable. Those new facilities are called load following power plants. They are actuated quickly when the wind stops blowing.

Did you know that all wind turbines consume power from the grid? That parasitic power is never mentioned.

You also didn't mention the acreage needed to support a wind facility. Yea, you were told they only destroy 1% of the land… But, they destroy 100% of the view.

We can't prove that we are getting sick from the wind turbines, but I can say that since the turbines were place here, our doctor and dental visits has drastically increased and we feel sick.

The wind industry are experts at misrepresentation and word smithing. If you really dig into this industry you will find everything I have said to be true.

-Parke Ewing