question of the day: Will Perez Hilton’s sponsored blogging make you more suspicious of other bloggers’ motives in discussing movies?

It won't "make" me suspicious, since I'm already suspicious. Everyone has got some kind of bias going, caused by something or other.

Also, given that the use of shills is a time-honoured tradition, I'm not surprised when it shows up somewhere new. (note that chat-room shills have been doing this sort of thing towards videogames for a couple years now)

You know what? If they do a good enough job of convincing you they believe in what they're selling, then more power to them.

It's up to the readers to decide how valuable said blogger's opinion is.

Fo example: You've written so well about the new Wolverine and Star Trek films, that even if I disagree about the final verdict, I just don't believe you're being paid to advetise them.

And hell, if you are, you should get paid double. ;P

I thought Perez Hilton was a celebrity gossip personality, not a film critic. I would be more disturbed if you or some other actual critic did such a thing, but this is Perez Hilton we're talking about here - he crudly photoshops photo's of celebs as part of his blog.

Perez Hilton isn't a blogger, but a bad parody of a blogger, just as The Onion is a good parody of a mainstream news source. He isn't even a celebrity gossip maven, but only a bad parody of a celebrity gossip maven. I don't know whether his parody is conscious or unconscious, and I can't think of a reason to care.

This was my opinion before the whole beauty pageant controversy. Nobody came out of that mess looking better than they went in, but I was amazed to see so many people declare their hate for Perez Hilton. Why bother? There's nothing there worth the effort to hate.

In sum, I've never even trusted the man to be genuinely fake and shallow. Why should anything he does or says affect my opinion of anything or anyone else in the world?

The larger question here is why Perez Hilton is considered a "celebrity" to begin with.

I'm curious why you think this is different than radio hosts reading live ads? Is it because twitter makes the ad harder to detect?

MaryAnn is obviously being sponsored by the Librul Media Conspiracy...

Meh. Twitter-size comments are only good for generating product awareness anyway. It's pretty obvious when an actual review is really an advertisement.

Who's Perez Hilton anyway?

He must be related to that blonde, Q-tip of a girl who prides herself on being a simpleton and purposely speaks like a zonked-out stripper because, I dunno, stupid is apparently sexy?

Do any of us need to give attention to the Hilton clan in recession times? I don't think so. I'm also getting pissed at the ill-timing of programs that focus on the rich, like that horrible Desperate Housewife reality show and Royal Pains.

The hell of it is, "Perez Hilton" isn't even his real name.

That's right, he's famous for faking the name of a person who's infamously famous for being famous, not for being actually related to her.

Curse you, mortadella! Curse you for making me do research on Perez Hilton! Why couldn't you waste your own damn time going to Wikipedia?

Victor, I'm sorry ! I would have done it myself, but I was at work at the time, heh-heh. But my goodness, you're a sweetie for looking that human void up for the rest of us. :)