You've got a point. I watched Juno on TV this weekend, and now I'm ecstatic to have a forum to almost-segue into what a terribly shitty movie that was. How the fuck did it win Best Screenplay? The shitty screenplay was the worst part of the movie!
See? See also: why Yelp is useless (at least in SF, which some claim to be a local phenomenon.)
The rare times I'm incensed enough to write a scathing review (or any review) is when I've watched/read something that I HATED and that everyone else inexplicably loved.
@12 - Exactly. I wouldn't expend the energy to badmouth some never-gonna-be-heard-from-again author. If I buy a shitty book or see a shitty filmโwell, they can't all be winners. But when something I find truly awful is overwhelmingly declared "great", I feel the need to pipe up on the off chance people might see it my way and I can save someone the aggravation.
Or, it just feels good yell at a mountain from time to time.
@12. I think that is often true. I buy a lot of textbooks, and you never see a lot of reviews on Amazon books unless the first review is an obvious glowing 5-star planted review. They're easy to recognize: they are long and detailed and perfectly written. I once bought a child psychology book that was just gibberish; it had very poor, unsubstantiated science and contained horrible grammar and many many mispellings. Plus, of course, it was very expensive because it was considered a medical text. Anyway, I went back to the site to see if anyone agreed with me, and of course the average rating was 5-stars, so I just blew up. I wrote a long, detailed scathing review complete with several direct quotes, etc. And then ANOTHER 5-star review showed up. And then other real customers started writing negative reviews and it got very big very fast. We real customers might not have bothered if those 5-star reviews weren't there to say "fuck you" to our good judgement.
Want to let you know though that I wouldn't have seen Hamlet were it not for your recommendation. And I'm glad I went.
See? See also: why Yelp is useless (at least in SF, which some claim to be a local phenomenon.)
The rare times I'm incensed enough to write a scathing review (or any review) is when I've watched/read something that I HATED and that everyone else inexplicably loved.
Or, it just feels good yell at a mountain from time to time.
@12. I think that is often true. I buy a lot of textbooks, and you never see a lot of reviews on Amazon books unless the first review is an obvious glowing 5-star planted review. They're easy to recognize: they are long and detailed and perfectly written. I once bought a child psychology book that was just gibberish; it had very poor, unsubstantiated science and contained horrible grammar and many many mispellings. Plus, of course, it was very expensive because it was considered a medical text. Anyway, I went back to the site to see if anyone agreed with me, and of course the average rating was 5-stars, so I just blew up. I wrote a long, detailed scathing review complete with several direct quotes, etc. And then ANOTHER 5-star review showed up. And then other real customers started writing negative reviews and it got very big very fast. We real customers might not have bothered if those 5-star reviews weren't there to say "fuck you" to our good judgement.