While the title of the story is interesting, this tidbit was buried further down:
Sound of Freedom" surprised critics by smashing box office projections, grossing more than $150 million so far. The film had a $14.5 million budget. Social media users have suggested that the film is using “astroturfing,” a practice of buying up hundreds of tickets to make theaters appear sold out, to inflate its success.
Several TikToks have gone viral showing “Sound of Freedom” theaters that were supposedly sold out completely empty once the movie begins.
That’s how a ton of politicians “NYT best sellers” books are done. They’ll use campaign funds to buy up a ton of books and then give them out for free at rallies and shit.
But they also put a dagger next to it to denote a bulk sale.
https://heavy.com/news/2019/11/triggered-ny-times-bestseller-dagger-bulk-sales/
They only started doing that within the last 5-10 years iirc though
And the list isn’t purely sales numbers anyway as they admitted in the 80s in a legal case. It isn’t mathematically objective but rather done on a subjective editorial scale. They choose which books to have on a subjective scale that doesn’t even have to take sales into account.
