Amy Schumer Addresses Trolls Trying to Sabotage Her Newest Special’s Ratings

If you’re a comic and you want to build yourself a nice little mob of hate-spewing trolls, talk about your politics in your act. If you really want to turn up the hate, be a woman. As Amy Schumer has learned, being a politically-outspoken female comic isn’t easy. Her politics and honesty about her sexuality and personal life have garnered her a dedicated following of adoring fans, but have also attracted the ire of internet trolls who attack her on social media and even try to tank the ratings of her various projects.

SplitSider posted a story on Tuesday, documenting the various efforts by trolls to derail the ratings for Schumer’s book, attack fellow comics who support Schumer’s comedy, and tank the ratings of her new Netflix special, The Leather Special. The latter, which currently has over 1,500 reviews on Netflix, has accrued a massive amount of one-star ratings. While some of them are surely legitimate, many of them appear to have been left by people who didn’t view more than a few minutes of the special, or saw none of it at all, but who simply disagree with her politics or dislike her personality.

“You’re a comedian, not an expert on politics. Stop feeding us this crap. The only funny joke you have is your career,” reads one review.

“I tried to watch it but found it to be unwatchable after about 3 minutes. To be fair, seeing Amy Schumer and hearing her voice gives me diarrhea inducing stomach cramps on her best day,” says another.

“I couldn’t make it through more than a few minutes without kicking off a gag reflex. More of a rambling attempt at being funny than anything else. Seinfeld had it right in reasoning that comedians who aren’t very funny have to fall back on using crude language,” says another reviewer.

As with all things, the truth usually lies in the middle of two extremes. The special has a 75 rating on Metacritic; most ratings from critics have been positive to mediocre, while the vast majority of the user ratings on the site are not just negative, but straight up hateful. The idea that there is a concerted effort by Schumer detractors to negatively rate anything she touches seems to hold weight, especially in the case of The Leather Special, which features material that’s par for the course for Schumer, but which is now eliciting way more of a reaction than it ever has prior, at a time when Schumer’s star is bigger than it’s ever been.

Schumer addressed the smear campaign in a post on Instagram, which you can see below. She thanked SplitSider for doing it’s due diligence in researching the reviews prior to accepting that they were all legitimate, informed ratings, and went on to say that she welcomes the hate that she receives, as it “makes [her] feel so powerful and dangerous and brave.” She goes on to say that “It reminds me what I’m saying is effective and brings more interest to my work and their obsession with me keeps me going.”

tl’dr Amy Schumer has a lot of haters, whom she encourages to keep drinking that Haterade.

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Bill Tressler

Bill is a writer and comedy enthusiast from New York. An avid gamer and podcast fan, he strives to always toe the line between charming irreverence and grating honesty.
Bill Tressler
Bill Tressler
Bill is a writer and comedy enthusiast from New York. An avid gamer and podcast fan, he strives to always toe the line between charming irreverence and grating honesty.