We aren't looking for "reviews." We are looking for artifacts of impact. Evidence isn't a star rating; it's a footprint left by a work as it passes through the collective consciousness. This applies equally to films, books, albums, and television.
Evidence is defined as any documented linguistic or behavioral shift that can be traced back to a specific work. We look for three primary markers across all media:
Does the work appear in discourse long after its marketing budget has hit zero?
Does the language used to describe the work involve bodily functions? "I felt sick," "I couldn't breathe," "I had dreams about the last chapter," "I still hear that bassline everywhere."
Is the work used as a "language" to explain other things? "This situation is very 'The Room' right now." "She's going through a very White Album phase." "It reads like late Cormac — beautiful and completely merciless."
We don't just hit the big sites; we go where the "haunting" actually happens — across all media types.
| Source Category | Specific Examples | Why We Use It |
|---|---|---|
| Diaristic Records | Letterboxd, Goodreads, Rate Your Music, Personal Blogs | Captures the raw, "unauthorized" emotional response and rewatch/reread/relisten frequency. |
| Interpretive Hubs | Reddit (r/movies, r/books, r/music, r/television), YouTube | Essential for SYM (Symbolic Density) and FRC (Friction). We track thread length and theory-crafting across all media types. |
| Institutional Records | Metacritic, Pitchfork, Publishers Weekly, Rotten Tomatoes | Used primarily to establish the CNS (Consensus) baseline and identify CLT (Cult) reclamation arcs. |
| The Dream-Net | Specialized forums, Twitter/X, "Explain the Ending" search volume, fan wikis | Provides the data for HNT (Haunting). We look for keywords associated with intrusive memory across all media forms. |
| Technical Archives | American Cinematographer, Sound on Sound, Publishers Weekly, TVLine | Feeds the FRM (Formal Risk) axis. We look for mentions of experimental technique, unconventional structure, or intentional "failure" in any medium. |
We use a method called Contextual Sentiment Weighting. A mention is only "Evidence" if it meets specific criteria for the axis it's feeding. The signals vary by medium — here is what we look for in each.
Low weight:"That movie was scary." — generic.
High weight:"I still see the woman from the room whenever I walk past a red door."
— It demonstrates Intrusive Memory. The work has installed a "trigger" in the viewer's physical environment.
We look for The Inverted Recency Curve. Most films have a spike of mentions at release and then flatline. OBS evidence is found in the "Long Tail." If people are still making 2-hour video essays about a single shot in 2026, the obsession value is calculated as a ratio of Time Passed : Mention Density.
We look for Discourse loops. If a novel's comment sections involve the same two sides arguing about its ending five years after publication, the FRC score remains high. Books generate uniquely slow-burning friction — a single passage can split readers for decades.
— The work is an "unsettled object." There is no stable cultural account of what the book means.
Low weight:"Good book, made me think." — generic.
High weight:"I keep pressing it on anyone going through a breakup — there's no better map for that feeling."
— The book has become a cultural tool, a shorthand for navigating specific emotional terrain.
Low weight:"Listened to it at the gym." — generic.
High weight:"I had to pull my car over. I couldn't drive. I just sat in a parking lot for the whole second side."
— The album produced an involuntary physical response — a primary VLT signal.
We look for Deep-cut archaeology. When listeners excavate B-sides, alternate takes, and live bootlegs years after release — mapping their findings in annotated wikis — the obsession value rises continuously rather than decaying.
Low weight:"Watched the whole season in a weekend." — generic.
High weight:"People have been building theory maps connecting every background detail across all six seasons. New connections are still being found."
— The work has embedded a symbolic grammar that viewers are actively decoding — a hallmark of high SYM.
We look for Reclamation after cancellation. A cancelled show that generates more discourse in year three post-cancellation than it did during its run has undergone a CLT inversion — the institutional rejection became the founding myth of its cult.
Because the web is full of noise, every piece of evidence goes through a Confidence Check (0–1):
High-velocity, repetitive phrasing is discarded.
We adjust for "ironic" mentions — vital for CLT and CNS.
A mention in a peer-reviewed media journal carries more weight for SYM than a tweet, while a tweet carries more weight for VLT (Voltage) if it describes a visceral reaction.
By the time a work is "Published" in our database, it means the evidence has reached a critical mass where the cultural "shape" of the work is no longer an opinion — it is a measurable fact of how people are living with it. Film, book, album, or series: the standard of proof is the same.