IMDb Bragging Rights – Badges Galore

For Yelp, it’s simple: write reviews, get nominated for Elite status, then rinse and repeat every year. For Google, the more reviews or tips you write, the more points you accrue, and the higher level Local Guide you become. Amazon has (or had) its Vine Reviewers, Top Reviewers, and top reviewers in various categories.

But IMDb goes beyond them all, perhaps not greater in value, but certainly greater in quantity. I mean look at that up there, it’s like a candy store of badges.

IMDb Badges, Briefly

Here’s a nice surprise for you: if you have an IMDb account, you already have a Tenure badge, which lets everyone know how long you’ve been a member of IMDb.

And by and large, if you are an active user of IMDb, doing more than just checking in on Steve Guttenberg, seeing what the old Gute is up to, IF you’re actually rating and reviewing movies, adding trivia, making lists, and so on, you’re probably just going to gain badges as you go along. As IMDb itself says, badges “are either automatically assigned or earned,” being added to your profile within 24 hours.

As you can see from the picture above, doing various tasks on IMDb will net you badges, from adding plot details, to making and taking polls, to netting ALL of the helpful votes out there. And once you get those badges, here they’ll be:

Impressive, right? Big swoon? I’ll admit, it does look snazzy. But the difference between Yelp or Amazon and IMDb is that the latter doesn’t show these prestigious accomplishments on the review page. Probably because there are so many, they’d never be able to fit like “Elite ‘22” does. But still, it brings up a bit of an issue:

If you have experience reviewing, and the badges to show you should be trusted, how do you get people to trust your review amongst all the others. Well, here’s one way.

There you have it. All you have to do is TELL people in no uncertain terms, and then they’ll listen. Alternatively, IMDb has a new default sorting method in their user reviews tab:

There you have it - Prolific Reviewers. Note that no badge directly corresponds to the term, but according to the IMDb community boards, this distinction is bestowed upon the top 1000 reviewers. Which really doesn’t seem like a lot.

The same post indicates that you might be able to get yourself on that list by writing a few hundred reviews. And while there don’t appear to be perks like Yelp Elites enjoy, one perk is getting to watch a bunch of movies.

This is your destiny. Get your badges. Don’t do drugs.