Claire Goforth

Tech

Posted on Jun 29, 2023   Updated on Jun 29, 2023, 8:59 am CDT

This is the promise made by a crowdsourced review site that allows users to filter movies by various metrics that indicate “wokeness”—which it despises.

Zeitgeist Reviews’ metrics include “gay stuff,” feminism, neo-Marxism, and affirmative action. The site also uses facial recognition and other open-source tools, including a platform called “Jew or Not Jew,” to determine actors’ races and the overall racial breakdown of the cast, which it compares to global and domestic demographics.

It’s like Yelp for movies if Yelp included the racial demographics for each business’ employees.

Founder Michael, who declined to give his last name, claims that Zeitgeist Reviews has amassed “the world’s largest database of actors’ race and gender.” He said that he created the site, formerly known as Right Wing Tomatoes, after an argument with a friend about diversity in Hollywood.

“I just wanted to prove academia wrong about how diversity does not increase sales,” Michael told the Daily Dot via email. But his effort to make this point has resulted in the creation of a movie review site steeped in bigotry.

The underlying premise of Zeitgeist Reviews is basically that people want to consume entertainment that aligns with their worldview and personal identity. The site says it stands against two things—large studios and being woke—and that it “obsesses about race, politics & finance so you don’t have to.”

Zeitgeist isn’t even the only site of its kind—Rolling Stone reported that another similar site was founded earlier this year. Zeitgeist does appear to have been the first, however. It’s been active on social media since at least 2021.

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