State Of the Ticketverse 2024

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Ticketmaster.

It's New Year's Eve, Ticketholders, and I'm feeling the pressure of the year to come, so I think this is the perfect time to look back at 2024 and see what I've accomplished. But first and always, I must ask that you please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can trade piece of mind for peace of mind, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

2024 was an anniversary for me in a few ways. I turned forty this year, and my "career" as a critical voice on the internet began twenty years ago on Yahoo! Groups, hence the rebranding of TBT 2023 to TBT Anniversary.

I leaned more heavily into post banners and reliable formats this year (including the above banner for my New Piece Offerings column that I designed for 2024), which ended up having mixed results for my pageview analytics in the last quarter. However, I did end up more than doubling my all-time view count in less than a year, surpassing twenty thousand views for the first time in April to the tune of over a thousand a day.

Because I wanted my anniversary year to be special, I planned out everything, doing themed reviews for every month, introducing the List Lookback event, watching and reviewing One Piece for the first time, and devoting the entire month of October to the author who shaped my affinity for horror: R.L. Stine. As a result, 2024 was my most prolific year in terms of consuming and creating content...and this final quarter has taught me the meaning of burnout. The effort I have put into my content these past three months, whether because of weather conditions, issues with Blogger and BlogPros, or just a case of my content being too formulaic and rushed to retain an audience (which I have noticed as something I'm feeling lately), is disproportionately large in comparison to the resulting viewership numbers, and it is only one of the reasons I plan to slow things down in early 2025.

Another accomplishment of mine this year is that I earned my second college degree in March (a Bachelor's Degree in Marketing), and between the Supreme Court overturning my repayment plan the week after I applied for it, my drastically reduced hours at the grocery store this winter, and the gambling debt that I won't pay off until late 2026, I need to find a way to start paying back my student loans by mid-January. So expect to not expect any content from me for at least a month while I beat the streets and try to literally work through this mess I've landed myself in.

Barring any other complications, I still have movie content that I plan on reviewing in certain months, as follows:

• February: Pearl/X/MaXXXine/The Substance
• March: Martial Law
• Easter Monday: Rascal Does Not Dream Of Bunny Girl Senpai
• May: Maniac/The Psychopath
• July: Uncle Sam
• August: Relentless 
• September: Legend Of the White Dragon (I hope!)
• October: Longlegs, Hider In the House, & Night Of the Creeps
• December: It's Alive!

Finally, as promised, I went on TierMaker and put together a ranking of my List Lookback selections this year, so I thought I'd end this off with a month-by-month explanation of why I put things in the slots I did. You may notice that I did not go so granular as to put plus and minus tiers for each letter grade for aesthetic reasons and because it's my first tier list and I don't fully know how to customize them yet.

• Pulp Fiction (January): Instantly quotable and culturally significant specimen of filmmaking, hurt only by its production heritage and a few unsympathetic and unlikable characters, I had to put it at the top of B.
• One Night At McCool's (February): my default favorite movie, but it loses major points for quality and not being as fun with repeat viewings. Bottom of B.
• Identity (March): A loose adaptation of the best-selling book of all time, featuring a star-studded cast, a well-acted villain (Pruitt Taylor Vince, somewhere between getting his junk bit off by a K-9 and playing Jonathan Kent in next year's Superman reboot), and a compelling mystery for first-time viewers, landing it slightly above McCool's despite the psychological thriller elements not landing on repeat viewings.
• Alien (April): The best movie I've seen this year, and the best Alien movie hands down. Fight me as I put this in the top of A-tier.
• Shoot 'Em Up (May): An action movie so saturated in cool that I had to put it at second place in A-tier despite a few pacing issues.
• Joy Ride (June): A fun take on the road trip slasher with impressive action setpieces and likable actors playing unlikable characters amidst a slew of logistical inconsistencies, stupid decisions, and wasted sequel potential. Top of C-tier.
• Independence Day (July): The movie that made Will Smith and Roland Emmerich prominent names in action cinema, full of iconic moments and patriotic feels...that led me down a rabbit hole to hating the moon and my summer, making it just average enough to land in the middle of C-tier.
• Last Man Standing (August): A lackluster adaptation of a Kurosawa classic that isn't as good as I remember it and makes a ton of bad creative decisions that hurt its context and Bruce Willis' leading performance, making it the best of D-tier.
• The Faculty (September): An incredibly late-90s Body Snatchers riff packed with famous faces, appropriately over-the-top performances, dense contextual lore, and a fun but easily solved whodunnit twist. Take a sip as I place it in the bottom of A-tier.
• Penny Dreadful (October): My favorite After Dark Horrorfest film, featuring some uncharacteristic casting that works even while the villain doesn't, and a claustrophobic setting that manages not to be boring. I only put it in the bottom of C-tier because the other average movies were better.
• The Usual Suspects (November): Cancelled celebrities, yellowface, unmemorable characters, and a twist so convoluted that it implodes under the gravitational force of its own cleverness, taking the bulk of the movie's runtime down as collateral damage. Bottom of D-tier.
• The Terminator (December): A highly influential sci-fi classic with some casting surprises and legendary Stan Winston effects that can't really nail down its pacing or character development, but earned its place in film history. I just had other movies in the lineup that I enjoyed more, like Pulp Fiction. So it terminates the year right behind that film in B-tier.

To those who stuck with me through the fall and winter burnout, thank you all. To those who fell off, I hope to see you back on board next year, and thank you as well for giving me the heights I have enjoyed in my twentieth year of content creation. I hope to explore more opportunities for employment and modernizing my social engagement in the year to come. 

For the final time this year, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can trade piece of mind for peace of mind, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Ticketmaster,

Out for lunch.

Happy New Year!