The smell of popcorn fills the theater as the lights begin to dim, and the screen stretches to the perfect size for the newest movie everyone is buzzing to see. But the only thing on the audience’s minds is what line they think is the funniest so their Letterboxd review gets the most likes.
Dating back to the early 2000s, rating apps like Goodreads and Letterboxd entered the pop culture world to help people keep track of people’s opinions on their favorite, or least favorite, books and movies. It was not until the pandemic that these websites garnered real attention.
University of Iowa second-year student Hannah Rechlicz uses reading to wind down from her accounting and finance classes. To keep track of the books she reads, she’s been using Goodreads, an app that lets you rate, review, and check your reading progress of different novels, for the past year.
Although Rechlicz doesn’t write reviews for the books, she checks them off her “Want to Read” list and finds the reviews and ratings affected her decision to pick up a book. While reading reviews, she’s looking to see if people generally enjoyed the book or if it was a total bust.
“Is it a really, really good book? Or is it just OK? If I see probably more than, like, six or seven one stars, I’ll probably push it off,” Rechlicz said.
When it comes to rating her own readings, Rechlicz tends to be generous, giving between three and five stars depending on how much she enjoyed the novel.
Rechlicz also uses Goodreads to connect with her aunt. They discuss books they’ve both read, and books are recommended to them based on what the other is reading.
Even though Rechlicz uses reading as an escape from her courses, she also creates competitions with herself. Goodreads lets you set goals, such as reading a set number of books in a year and keeping track of your progress, a feature Rechlicz utilizes frequently.
“I read 48 books in 2024 … I set my goal to 50 this year, so I’ve read about 13,” Rechlicz says.
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While Rechlicz has had an overall positive experience on Goodreads, many people do not see these types of apps the same way. Although he did not have an entirely negative opinion toward Letterboxd, graduate student and filmmaker Arman Hodasefat finds the site to be a little too much.
“It got to a point where there is just too much material to follow, and I stopped,” Hodasefat said.
With over 17 million users as of January 2025, the amount of content and reviews on the app can easily overwhelm anyone. Especially when looking into the large number of reviews listed under every movie.
Having public reviews for each movie on the site can easily muddy someone’s opinions about a movie before they see it. Hodasefat described the many ways this app has changed how society goes into views a film.
“I was reading so many different things, and it also was changing the culture of how we see movies and how we write about movies, like funny one-liners,” Hodasefat said. “There were too many of those happening, and it was becoming meme-able.”
UI first-year student Jack O’Hern also noticed these trends of how Letterboxd can influence an audience’s ideas of a movie.
“Letterboxd can kind of kill a movie before it’s even out, in a way,” O’Hern said. “So, if everybody in the world says this movie sucks, and you’re like, ‘Okay, great, I’m not going to watch it,’ then you don’t know if you could get anything else out of that.”
O’Hern also acknowledged the change in culture is not necessarily a bad thing. There is now a greater sense of community across the movie-viewing world, especially with the ability to follow friends or strangers on the website. Even though it has more of a “social media” feel to it now, it also plays into allowing people to connect more with others.
“So, if you’re going on Letterboxd, and you’re saying these are my top four movies, that lets other people know certain things about you that you want to put forward,” O’Hern said.