Why Reviews are Garbage – Part 1 of N
One of my favorite things about the internet, is how often people buy things based on the reviews. “Five thousand people have reviewed it and it is four stars! I am going to buy it.” Here is the thing, those reviews are bullshit. Even if some aren’t fake, they are not a good measure for a product. Reviews are a strategy to tell you that a thing is great! Except, is it? When was the last time you saw something with a thousand reviews and a 1 star rating? You won’t, cause the second the first set of ratings appear, they will be five to four stars. The reason is simple, anything that has 1 star will never be purchased. So manufacturers are compelled to buy their own product and rate it high to initiate a purchasing spree.
Now, it is important to note that there are many reasons that reviews are garbage. I plan to break down a lot of those over a multipart series. While reviews do help us choose a product, it isn’t necessary. In my mind, the reviews help you with satisfaction of a product. They let you be confident in a purchase; however, the ten major products on the webpage that all have similar reviews are all going to work just fine. That’s the trick, reviews don’t help you find a super amazing product, they help you be satisfied with the one product you ended up choosing.
Over the next couple of posts, I will go over why reviews are useless (except for customer satisfaction):
- Reviews are bought (maybe not directly, but just giving a person a product to review will drive certain behaviors)
- Updating reviews allow companies to respond to defective stock easier (if the product breaks, they replace it, you move review up based on how you are handled)
- Products are purchased in higher volumes if they are advertised by the manufacturer (Game of probability – more purchased, the better the reviews will go)
- People buy products based on their price point (aka, reviews are subjective – what is 4 stars for you is not the same as what is 4 stars for someone else)
- How many people buy multiple large items (no one buys 10 vacuums and then reviews them – they buy one, it works well, it gets 5 stars)
- New products will feel superior to old products (what we were using, are being replaced for a reason)
- ??? who knows, by the time I hit number six, I will probably have some ideas to hammer on
So, after I break down all the points above, I will hopefully have explained why reviews are useless. Even if I do that, I doubt it will matter. The reason is simple, humanity needs order to survive. That means, when faced with thousands of options, we need to be prepared to make an appropriate selection. In order to do that, we need to choose some criteria to narrow the options down. In the past, it was going into a store and touching the tangible object until we found defects or benefits that made one standout more than the rest. Instead, we now rely on other people’s tangible experiences with products to guide us to a selection. Which is silly, I am trusting someone I don’t know to make a recommendation to me. And it is insane that I accept that recommendation over my own mother. Yet, we all do it, we trust strangers on the internet to help us buy commodities instead of going and touching the real thing in person. So, if I can get one person to take back control, I will count this project a success.
Read MoreSmall Questions: Who Gets to Define Things?
I’ve got some beef. It has weighed heavily on me for sometime and I just want to know who gets to define things? Here’s where the beef comes from, there are things called scientists, and they create categorizations for things in our world. This organization of the world’s chaos has been a practice of humanity since Aristotle (probably way before him too). However, somehow we end up with crazy shit like pizza being considered a vegetable (cause of tomato sauce) or, even worse, watermelon being categorized as vegetable. That’s right, in the great state of Oklahoma, the humble watermelon is considered a vegetable – why… no one may ever know. And if you are wondering if the watermelon was made the state’s vegetable back in the 1800s, no… Oklahoma’s state congress just decided to vote and make it the state vegetable in 2007.
Now, I am not one to be bent out of shape for categorizing the world. I believe we don’t really need definitions around every little thing in society. However, if we are going to put something in a specific category, we really should follow some form of designation.
So, who gets to define things? Law makers or the scientists who hold higher level degrees in the field. I am going to go with the scientists, cause congress is playing too fast and loose with the designation of a watermelon to really be effective in a situation that is more serious.
Read MoreRapunzel – Project Grimm
In the gloom of evening, therefore, he let himself down again; but when he had clambered down the wall he was terribly afraid, for he saw the enchantress standing before him.
“How can you dare,” said she with an angry look, “to descend into my garden and steal my rampion like a thief? You shall suffer for it!”
…Then the enchantress allowed her anger to be softened
~The Brothers Grimm
Three pages… the story of Rapunzel is literally three pages in my complete copy of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Also, it is a little darker than the original; mostly because the enchantress isn’t the bad lady. Yeah, she isn’t the greatest when she locks away Rapunzel (a thing she does without any reason from The Brothers Grimm – it could be a valid reason or something kooky), or when she casts Rapunzel into a desert with twins (that’s right, when the prince is visiting her at night, they are boning), and then blinds the prince when he comes to visit and she [the enchantress] surprises him. Basically the plot of Rapunzel is this: her parents robbed an enchantress of rampion (which coincidentally means Rapunzel) and is a herb, the enchantress catches the husband, doesn’t punishes him but asks for his first kid, he willing gives her up (Rapunzel once she is born) to avoid punishment, Rapunzel goes to live in the tower, prince sneaks in, they bone, she gets pregnant (but you don’t learn that till later), then she is banished to a desert, the prince is blinded when he falls form the tower into some thorns, he wanders around a lot, finds the desert, her tears fix his eyes, they go live in a castle happily ever after.
My big take away: every story of you’ve ever read or seen of Rapunzel is a lie. Shiiiiiiiiiiit, Rapunzel is the product of a weak willed father who robbed a known enchantress. When he is caught, the fucker turns tail and sells out his unborn child – over a god damn herb. Also, since the narrator tells us that the enchantress softened in the above quote, we know that the punishment that was dolled out (Rapunzel becoming the enchantress’s child) was the more lenient option. Who knows what would have happened if she had kept her ire. [Give that ol’ “Read More” link a click to really understand the moral]
Read MoreOn Parenthood, A Set of Haikus
The two below are focused on how parents are protective of their kids. The goal was to mix that instinct to protect and foster growth with the environment. Thus, forces try to wipe out life, I wanted to show that there are pieces of the world that will protect the youth. Nothing is as unmoving as a boulder, so it made sense to me that a seedling that spouts inbetween boulders would inherently survive. So when I see the new parents in my life, I can only imagine that they are rocks that will protect those children they made. To the parents!
granite on both sides
wind lashes, storms surge – Berry
safe seed – a tree grows
~Theodore Maestranzi
Unmoving boulders
lone seed protected – parents
sapling becomes tree
~Theodore Maestranzi
Because my buddy who is a new father loves to correct my grammar (even when I speak) and his son looks like him, I feel like I am going to have a mini grammarian correcting my speech patterns soon enough. Therefore, I decided to drive him nuts with this personalized haiku.
Oh no, another
me is I, I is me – twins
my grammar assaulted
~Theodore Maestranzi
Read MoreLittle Brother and Little Sister – Project Grimm
For some time they were alone like this in the wilderness. But it happened that the King of the country held a great hunt in the forest. Then the blasts of the horns, the barking of dogs, and the merry shouts of the huntsmen rang through the trees, and the fawn heard all, and was only too anxious to be there. “Oh,” said he, to his sister, “let me be off to the hunt, I cannot bear it any longer,” and he begged so much that at last she agreed.
~The Brothers Grimm
Alright, here is the high level synopsis of this were pedophiliactic nightmarish scenario. A brother and sister are like: “Shit. Fuck. Our stepmother sucks, let’s run away.” So they do, and the step mother is like: “Oh man, I have to keep fucking with them. I’m a witch, let’s fuck their days up and poison all the creeks.” So she does that, the brother drinks some water, and he is turned into a fawn. Then, for some insane reason (they are living happily in the forest by this time, the sister is normal), the brother (who is a fawn) is like: “The king is on a hunt! Let me run around and fuck with them”. So he does, and then the king eventually tracks him to the house, where the king meets the sister and he goes: “Well fuck me sideways, a girl, I shall marry you and pump you full of babies”. So they do that once, she has a baby, then another evil witch kills her kid, swaps in her own daughter, and then they are killed when the king finds it out later.
First, before I get into it… we really need to re-evaluate the decisions of the past towards girls. Why was this a thing. Furthermore, why were American girls married off at 13 to 40 year old men. Shit, our history is fucked. Okay, now let’s get into the moral. [Click “Read More” to get into the real potatoes]
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