Don't judge a book by its cover. Be careful of reviews for sometimes they are inflated and/or fake! Favor user ratings vs critics ratings (my opinion). Also, just because something is rated low doesn't mean you won't like it.
Long version:
<-- Amazon rating system
Recently I was in the market for a new set of earphones. My first stop was Amazon. Right near the top of the search page was exactly what I was looking for. It had a great price and great reviews! Not only was it rated above 4 stars, but it had more than 300 ratings. Looking at the reviews, everyone had something good to say about the product.
Almost immediately I popped it in my shopping cart. Having a little extra time on my hands, I figure I'd shop around a bit to see if I could find a better deal or better product. After looking through several similar earphones, none had the features at the same great price with such good reviews, so I navigated back to the product page of the item in my cart to look it over one more time.
Looking at the reviews again, I spotted something strange. The first two reviewers had similar usernames. Wait... the first three... no... the first 15 reviewers had the same exact usernames, just with different digits at the end. All these were five star reviews. This must of been the same person somehow reviewing the same product many times, inflating the products rating!
This was on Amazon! One of the biggest tech companies in the world. It's 2019... how does Amazon not have code behind the scenes that catch this trickery!? Or maybe they are aware of it and just don't do anything to prevent it because it's not affecting their sales and profit. Sad! I almost fell for it. Good thing I spent the time looking over the reviews carefully this time. I don't always have time, however. Most of the time i'll glace at the review score and perhaps the number of reviews and I'll purchase the item shortly after. This time I just happen to notice the reviewers usernames.
This got me thinking about reviews in general. I personally never write product reviews. I'll write the occasional book or restaurant review, but that's about it. What about all those product reviewers? I wonder if they are paid. If that's the case, I'm wondering if they are honest reviews. How am I supposed to trust them? Great!
<-- Rottentomatoes.com rating system
This problem applies to other reviews as well. Movie and book reviews, car and other product reviews. Want to go see a movie? How often do you hear someone ask, 'how are the reviews?'. They will typically refer to Rotten Tomatoes.com or IMDB.com. If it's not well-rated, they might pass on seeing it. I think this is sad! Form your own opinion!
Luckily, many of these websites will have two scoring systems - one that is for 'critics' and one generated by users or audience. When I do look up ratings, I gravitated to the user-generated scores. Many times, there is a large difference between the scores of the critics vs the users. A recent example is for the film, 'Venom' with Tom Hardy. While this was in the category of big, blockbuster movies, I'd put it in the cult-classic bucket. You'd likely only enjoy it if you're a fan of Marvel Comics. Venom was rated 29/100 by 312 critics and 81/100 by 37,732 users. I personally enjoyed the heck out of this movie; I'd give it a solid 85/100.
This brings back a memory of when a cousin recommended a video game to me. I looked up its ratings and they weren't spectacular, so I gave the game a pass. It was a bit awkward when I told my cousin the reason I didn't try it out. I suppose I was a bit stuck-up back then and heavily swayed by the masses' opinion.
<-- Goodreads.com rating systemI'm also reminded of the novel, 'The Catcher in the Rye'. Often it is required reading for many grade-school students. It wasn't very memorable, so I re-read it a few years ago. I can't say I was very impressed. It's know to be a classic must-read. I give it a 3/5 stars. Surprisingly, it's rated lower than I expected on goodreads.com at 3.8/5 stars by 2,404,182 (2.4 million!) users. I imagine the 'critics' would rate it higher.
No comments:
Post a Comment