The Cole Smithey Thread

[timtommy]

Saying he pays the bills by doing type copy or filing isn't the same as saying he's shitty. There's no shame in your passion not being your day job (IMO).

Full disclosure: I did the online film critic schtick for a while. Very, very few people in that role do it full-time. It's pretty much expected that you have a day job, which is why I don't think the question was out of line. Occasionally, your day job becomes relevant to your criticism, so when you're not dealing with an Ebert or a Roper, it's very fair to wonder what someone's background contributes to their writing.

I was a nobody. And yet, I had tons of positive feedback on my work and a fair number of regular readers... Occasionally even the filmmakers themselves. And yet I'd never present myself in public the way Cole does. His accomplishments are precisely jack and shit, and he literally wants to act like Ebert is beneath him.

Sorry, I'm not trying to attack you personally, nor am I trying to make this about me. It's just that I find Cole's attitude professionally objectionable, and as an artist, I'm thinking you can understand my views, even if you don't agree with them.

Ok. I found that fairly persuasive. As I said, I didn't find it objectionable, but I am not anywhere close to the industry. If you did and you are then I definitely take your opinion to heart.

 

[OBAMATRON]

Does Cole know the difference between a review and a synopsis?

 

[Artard]

I don't really blame him for that. It would be hard for him to write reviews and sell himself without pretending, to himself and to others, that his reviews are useful and relevant.

If he is shitty (I know nothing about movies, so I will take this on faith from y'all) then it is fine to make fun of him for being shitty. But I don't think he should be obliged to go around saying that he is shitty all of the time. (Sorry, I know that is a bit of a parody of your point).

I wish I could post wheredoyouthinkweare.jpg right now.

Every single lolcow on this site thinks they're not shitty. In Cole's attempt to prove he's not shitty, he's apparently massively inflated his readership and certainly fraudulently inflated his social networking following.

I guess in every thread we can get a "In fairness, I don't believe Gloria should be obliged to go around telling everyone she's a shitty novelist/rapper/model/waitress."

No, she's not, and neither is Cole. But they are indeed shitty, and they have amusing reactions when the 2x4 of reality informs them of this.

 

[Henry Bemis]

I guess in every thread we can get a "In fairness, I don't believe Gloria should be obliged to go around telling everyone she's a shitty novelist/rapper/model/waitress."

No, she's not, and neither is Cole. But they are indeed shitty, and they have amusing reactions when the 2x4 of reality informs them of this.

But whereas Gloria can always (at least for now) cry herself into comfort with Daddy's money, what exactly is it that Cole can turn to for such comfort? Far be it from us to cast aspersions on his wife - she must know him better than we do - but I'm sure he can't turn to her too much. The moanings of an artiste only mean so much to whoever pays the bills.

Maybe that's why it took the better part of a decade for them to get married: she finally caved.

 

[Christ-Chan]

Saying someone who's been disfigured by an accident or a disease or other circumstance out of their control is selfish for still going out in public (yes, even appearing on TV or in magazines) is a fucking shitty human being. Even if it wasn't Ebert - if it was the cleaning lady or his neighbour - it doesn't matter. It's still saying "your existence is unpleasant to me and you should go away" which is, like I said, something only shitty human being would say. Even more so in a public format.

And, of course, saying "he liked this movie that I didn't like so obviously he wasn't that bright" makes you sound like a narcissistic tool.

 

[timtommy]

I guess in every thread we can get a "In fairness, I don't believe Gloria should be obliged to go around telling everyone she's a shitty novelist/rapper/model/waitress."

No, she's not, and neither is Cole. But they are indeed shitty, and they have amusing reactions when the 2x4 of reality informs them of this.

100%. When someone thinks they are good at something and noone else does, hilarity ensues. I don't feel bad for them, they put themselves out there (in general, I suppose shit could go over the top and elicit my sympathy). I just don't judge them specifically for putting themselves out there.

That was my only point.

But whereas Gloria can always (at least for now) cry herself into comfort with Daddy's money, what exactly is it that Cole can turn to for such comfort? Far be it from us to cast aspersions on his wife - she must know him better than we do - but I'm sure he can't turn to her too much. The moanings of an artiste only mean so much to whoever pays the bills.

Maybe that's why it took the better part of a decade for them to get married: she finally caved.

Meh, theories about the Smithey family finances are just theories. We don't really know how he contributes. He could be earning a respectable amount of money doing other things he is less proud of, like service jobs or that type of thing. If he wants a life of the struggling artiste, scraping together a living doing other jobs, all power to him. To me a waiter with a hobby he is passionate about is a more interesting person than one without.

 

[ChurchOfGodBear]

I try not to venture too many guesses about what kind of husband Cole is. We don't know enough to make a judgement. Knowing he's a lousy writer and has an abrasive Weston personality is all the ammo I need.

Cole is definitely my favorite tangent in the story of CWC. By all rights, this guy should be much better off than Chris. He had the opportunities and had none of Chris's handicaps. The fact that he's only marginally different than Chis (and not necessarily in a good way) is hilarious to me. It defies all expectations.

And that, little hipster, is irony.

 

[Pikonic]

Does Cole know the difference between a review and a synopsis?

I'm no professional, but I do review things for a local business sometimes.
The owner told me, Five paragraphs,
1. quick into saying you like/don't like it.
2. Summary
3. What's good about it.
4. What's bad about it
5. Which group of people would like it, which wouldn't.

Cole seems to write a summary and slap a sentence at the beginning basically saying it's good or it's shit. His witty antidotes are try hard and sometimes forced. He's not giving me anything I can't get from the back of a DVD cover.

 

[Picklechu]

IIRC, his wife is a bartender. In some places, they can pull in a major coin per night. If she has a day job on top of that, she could easily be the main breadwinner.

Speculation, of course, but it's far more believable than Cole is living off her income than the other way around.

Either way, it was a dick response to give to someone on your fan page.

I think someone mentioned that she owns a bar, or, at the very least, manages one.

I don't get the hate on Cole for possibly living off his wife. I would love for my wife to be the main breadwinner so that I could be free to do what I am passionate about full time.

So would Chris.

The point is that he's lying to everyone by pretending to be some bigshot film critic, when in reality his criticism gig isn't worth the bandwidth it takes up. It's the classic Weston arrogance and dishonesty that we don't like.

I would be more empathetic towards Cole and his reliance on his spouse if he was actually good at what he did. There's a difference between a starving artist and a well-fed bum.

Exactly this. Cole places himself above everyone without justification. Unwarranted self-importance, smugness, etc are clearly a Weston genetic trait.

 

[Henry Bemis]

Exactly this. Cole places himself above everyone without justification. Unwarranted self-importance, smugness, etc are clearly a Weston genetic trait.

Weston or Wynn? Be specific.

 

[NoMoreSleeping]

The problem with living off your wife, or anyone you are in a relationship with, is that the equity eventually overrides the [sexual] attraction, and you end up feeling stuck, or worse, powerless. Too much is tied into the relationship to really consider leaving, even if you wanted to.

You imagine that you would have the power to pursue your passion, but the reality is you only have what you are allotted and depend on someone else to provide for you. That is NOT the foundation of a good, happy relationship, and the reason people laugh at it is because the point of being an adult is to be in control of your life (despite most people truly ever being in control).

Remember when you were 12 and wanted to buy a couple Team Rocket booster packs but your mom kept saying it wasn't in the budget, despite buying (what you perceived as) useless shit for herself? There you go.

It's different if you have money, or your own way to make ends meet and you are using your wife and/or GF for EXTRA money, but you should be able to walk away from a relationship without it seriously affecting your life. If you live with, and share a majority of your stuff with another person, it is very hard to leave them.
I'm not even talking about the emotional attachment that will come regardless.

 

[Christ-Chan]

If you ignore the mustache and add a fedora I think I have figured out exactly why Coley didn't like Citizen Kane:

Contrived sectarianism + absurd anti-capitalist agendas = SStupid

 

[LOLlolcow]

I couched it earlier but it's painfully obvious that Cole bought thousands of likes for his Facebook page.

I'm sorry if this has been mentioned earlier (I haven't read the entire thread yet,) but it's also painfully obvious that he bought Youtube views

104,236 views. 18 likes. 16 dislikes. 3 comments. Yikes.
His next popular video has 7,133 views.
(Screengrab for posterity)

 

[Picklechu]

I'm sorry if this has been mentioned earlier (I haven't read the entire thread yet,) but it's also painfully obvious that he bought Youtube views
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eny58TyFTZ4104,236 views. 18 likes. 16 dislikes. 3 comments. Yikes.
His next popular video has 7,133 views.
(Screengrab for posterity)

I don't recall whether or not YouTube views have been mentioned, but people have talked about how he bought Facebook "likes" for his fan page. That's pretty damn pathetic.

 

[Artard]

I'm sorry if this has been mentioned earlier (I haven't read the entire thread yet,) but it's also painfully obvious that he bought Youtube views
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eny58TyFTZ4104,236 views. 18 likes. 16 dislikes. 3 comments. Yikes.
His next popular video has 7,133 views.
(Screengrab for posterity)

Wow, I missed that one. Just like with his Facebook likes, he bought a nice round number (25k there, 100k views here) and cheaped out on the rest of it (comments, favorites, etc.) that would make it look legit.

You do sometimes see outliers like that on youtube, but if people were attracted to the nudity in the movie you'd expect a few dozen comments in broken English demanding the nipples.

 

[libertyoftheaether]

I'm sorry if this has been mentioned earlier (I haven't read the entire thread yet,) but it's also painfully obvious that he bought Youtube views
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eny58TyFTZ4104,236 views. 18 likes. 16 dislikes. 3 comments. Yikes.
His next popular video has 7,133 views.
(Screengrab for posterity)

Why would anyone pay for views and likes? The appearance of popularity isn't going to translate into actual popularity.

I guess this is classical Weston logic at work.

 

[Artard]

Why would anyone pay for views and likes? The appearance of popularity isn't going to translate into actual popularity.

I guess this is classical Weston logic at work.

A person who is considering hiring a writer to basically just give his opinion on a film might factor in how much of an audience the opinionator has. Social media numbers are not the best indication of a following but they're the easiest to find -- you just plug the writer's name into google and on the first page you have at least 2 sites with a tally of how many followers they have.

1,000 would not be bad for a film critic of any age. Cole, being a Weston, rage fucked his page to make himself King Of All Critics, and now his page is basically wrecked. He bought 25,000 fans and none of them have ever interacted with his page, which means even fewer of his handful of actual fans/friends/potential employers see his posts than did before. His internal stats must be hilarious. "8 of 25,104 fans saw this post." He could scoop the entire world with the location of the Malaysian airliner and nobody would know.

 

[MysticMisty]

Why would anyone pay for views and likes? The appearance of popularity isn't going to translate into actual popularity.

I guess this is classical Weston logic at work.

Some people buy favorable reviews of books on Amazon. Cole is far from the first to do this sort of thing.

 

[PCA]

I wonder if Cole really knows (in detail) about his brother's internet fame and what he actually thinks about it

 

[Datiko]

Why would anyone pay for views and likes? The appearance of popularity isn't going to translate into actual popularity.

I guess this is classical Weston logic at work.

Its basic marketing. Look how many streamers try to spike their feeds by offering "giveaways" or otherwise buying false interest.