Fairy Tales And False Hopes
Hey, there!
As actors and VO artists, we want answers to our career questions. Sometimes, like primitive cavemen, if we can’t find those answers, we’ll accept what others tell us if we hear it enough, no matter what amount of truth those answers contain.
One of those false answers has to do with IMDB and the action of “liking” an IMDB profile.
Every few days, I get a request, either via Facebook, on lists I’m on, via twitter, via email or in everyday conversation, to go to someone’s IMDB profile page and click on the Like button I’ll find there.
(I got one just a couple of days ago.)
Usually, this is requested so that the person’s Starmeter will drop because of a flurry of activity on the page.
For those of you who don’t know, the lower your Starmeter ranking, the better – the biggest stars have the lowest Starmeters. If you’re interested, you can find the top ten here at IMDB’s Top 10 Starmeter Rankings Page.
These clicking/liking requests come in from both actors and representation alike, sometimes even from well-meaning friends and relatives. A lower Starmeter ranking, the thinking goes, might result in more attention in an upcoming meeting with a potential agent, manager, producer, writer, casting person or director.
And as generous actors, we’d like to help, right?
Please.
Don’t.
No, really.
DON’T.
Don’t ask someone to do this for you, and don’t waste your time “helping” others with this.
I speak from first hand knowledge – I regularly beta test IMDB’s designs and offerings at their offices in Sherman Oaks, and I’m very familiar with their Starmeter formula. The concept of lowering someone’s Starmeter at all, let alone significantly, by “liking” their IMDB page or clicking on the links on the page is FALSE.
It doesn’t work.
Period.
And this is really important: anyone who promises you they can lower your Starmeter for a fee is simply ripping you off.
I would like to make a request. Please join me in starting a more truthful rumor: IMDB no longer regards likes, clicks or visits to a profile page as a significant portion of their Starmeter rankings. They realized years ago the possibility of getting several hundred friends clicking on your page as a gaming maneuver, falsely lowering your Starmeter ranking for a brief time.
If you want to lower your Starmeter, get cast as the lead in a studio film or network television show, then have the mainstream media write lots of articles about you. In other words, get better and get booked.
(You might also want to get arrested, or get famous, then die. I don’t recommend any of this, but those are the biggest Starmeter-lowering strategies.)
And don’t think that any service or site that charges you a fee to “lower your Starmeter” will work either. They are all ripoffs, preying on your misguided notion that a lower Starmeter will increase your chances of booking a part. It won’t. Thankfully, many of them have died and gone to digital hell, like Karmalicity, which fed actors fairy tales and false hope for years.
Here are some sites to avoid (I’m not linking to them on purpose):
boostmystar dot com
starboostmedia dot com
starmeterrankings dot com
buyklout dot com
imdbpromo dot com (a site that actually tried to blackmail actors into paying them, or else they would RAISE their Starmeter number)
Oh, and there’s a guy in Southern California, who goes by the name of John or Mike Arnold, who claims he can lower your Starmeter ranking if you’ll just send him $50 or so a month. Checks only. Right.
In the end, it simply doesn’t help to click on someone’s IMDB page. It wastes everyone’s time. Any number change from clicking or liking will be miniscule (if at all). And you won’t have any actual acting/booking event that you can point to in support of any drop in Starmeter numbers, obliterating your chances at impressing that hot contact with your new lower ranking.
Don’t we all have enough to do with our limited actor office time without wasting it on fairy tales and false hopes? I think we do – and I’d love it if you’d pass this wisdom along every chance you get.
What false hopes have you gotten rid of? What fairy tales do you wish your fellow actor and voice over artist would stop telling as truth? Let me know in the comments below.
Hope this helps.
David
Thanks David!!!
Thank you for that! I have a question you may be able to answer. I have tried IMDB customer service, but no result.
My daughter and I have been attacked by a moron posting false credits. The only one left in there now is a Tony Award nomination. I am shocked that such an obvious fake post slipped by their staff for both of us. It is quite embarrassing and leads to questions by an interested director on which of my daughter’s credits are legit. I’m so disappointed in IMDB right now. Any thoughts on this matter?
First, I wouldn’t be too hard on IMDB. The system that allows you or anyone else to add your daughter’s credit to her page (like casting directors, production, networks, her agent, and others, including unfortunately people who are mistaken or who are pranking) is useful. Just keep editing the page until that award goes away. Stick with it.
Thanks! We love the service and pay monthly for it. It was our first negative experience since joining about 8 years ago. I just wish their removal process was easier. The troll also added a fake “Birth name” for my daughter which so far I was told by IMDB they will not remove but only update with her proof of actual middle name. I do not want that made public to begin with… So this part is frustrating. I am hoping to get a better response from my latest message to them. Crossing fingers. I use IMDB daily and am happy with every other aspect.
Not sure how old this article is, but karmalicity.com is still around in 2015 and sadly it does indeed work. I signed up to see who was on it and you’ve got people with no credits ranking in the 40k range. I would hope people in the industry can see through this ridiculousness, but your claim that it doesn’t work is sadly false.
The site may work, and you may get a temporary boost in your Starmeter rankings, but I stand by my statement that using any site or service like that does. not. work. For the reasons stated in the article, it does. not. work. CDs and their teams can see right through that mirage. It does. not. work.
Dave, allow me to agree with your position, while citing recent experiences where I in one week shifted my score over 150,000+ Star meter points. The shift is temporary and by no means would I ever use this technique more than 3-4 times per year. I have successfully used it twice. Here goes: Mid-week I put my IMDb personal link on every email, and Facebook post. I then posted my headshot on my FB page and in my FB entertainment group, and asked my friends and group members to click the link. No “like” clicks are necessary. That Monday my meter score dropped from 160k to 50k (rounding off). The following week it shot up 60k pointsa, then went up again radically to this week’s 292k. On average without any manipulation from week to week my score ranges from mid 100k-mid 200k. Only when I cause a flurry of clicks to my IMDb do I dip dramatically below 100k. Again, I do this very infrequently, but especially before I plan to contact CDs or other industry folks. That’s why if an actor is in the news for whatever reason, as a result of Google searches ((which provides IMDb links near the top) their Star Meter scores drop significantly. I agree however, that these are all gimmick results. When you consistently work and people become interested in you, they search out info on you; the clicks to your site occur on a consistent basis and your score remains lower.
The whole point of the article as to illustrate that this sort of “gimmick” doesn’t. actually. work. Agents, managers, casting directors and producers KNOW these tricks, and they’ll look to see if there’s any significant reason why your number dropped so much so quickly. And when you do it anyway, and they don’t find anything that supports the drop, it tells them a lot about you, and not good things. It’s also a lot of work, and for nothing. Save yourself the trouble, and just don’t do it. It isn’t helping you, and is actually hurting you. I guarantee it!
No argument here. Good post!
Great article! Thanks David!!!
Thanks for the reminder, David. Just out of curiosity, I checked the Starmeter Rankings. I have no idea what their algorithm is but I found it odd that only 22% of the top 100 ranked are men.
David,
I’ve been a top casting director for over 2 decades and I laugh at the StarMeter (even my own) – I often laugh when dead celebrities are ranked higher than some A list actors
I applaud you posting this because it’s true – and as a CD, I really don’t give a crap – I’m looking for TALENT – your DEMO REEL will show me more than your StarMeter
And if you think paying for followers on Instagram works, that’s an even bigger joke – people must think we’re so dumb we can’t figure out that if you have a million followers and you’re only getting 2,500 “likes” there’s a problem
Keep up the good work
David,
What makes the meter go down? I have done NOTHING at all since APAC, and today it’s 16,000 DOWN. Very annoying. (Although it should say UP since the higher it is, the worse)
Second, how did you get to regularly beta test IMDB’s designs and offerings at their offices in Sherman Oaks, and what is their Starmeter formula?
Veleka