Interest in the unreleased teaser trailer for The Dark Knight Rises is at a fevered pitch. Yesterday, /Film took the unorthodox step of posting a description of the trailer. Sure, people might think such a posting goes too far in the world of fandom, but the interest has gotten so insane that every time we post ANYTHING related to The Dark Knight Rises, our servers stutter as thousands of film fans simultaneously click through the front page to see us eat of the scraps from Christopher Nolan’s table.
You could cluck your tongue and furrow your brow at this behavior. But above all others, Dustin Rowles from Pajiba totally gets it:
A movie like The Dark Knight Rises generates a ton of web traffic. For instance, that description of The Dark Knight Rises trailer on Slashfilm was retweeted over 100 times and Liked on Facebook nearly 300 times. It probably generated thousands of page views. So, while we were all making fun of Peter over at Slashfilm for posting it, he was probably laughing his ass off as his wallet grew three sizes because that one post generated more traffic than a lot of movie blogs put up in a week, a notion that makes some of the more high-minded assholes weep in their Ramen noodles. The economy is in the tank, but he just paid a writer for a week. He’s got an audience; he caters to it, and honestly — as TK so eloquently put it — the rest of us can go f*ck ourselves. After all, in the 100 or so comments underneath the description, what I didn’t see from his readers was, “You asshole. I can’t believe you posted this.” It’s taken for what it’s worth, and the world moves on. It’s not like we’re dealing with the debt crisis, like Emily Miller — a political reporter for the Washington Times — who actually tweeted in the midst of debt negotiations: “Forget debt ceiling … hello tan Clooney. RT @popsugar: Wow! Newly single #GeorgeClooney is lookin’ good in Cancun!”