{"id":640,"date":"2004-08-14T23:47:04","date_gmt":"2004-08-15T03:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2004\/08\/14\/the-seamy-underbelly-of-reviewing\/"},"modified":"2004-08-14T23:47:04","modified_gmt":"2004-08-15T03:47:04","slug":"the-seamy-underbelly-of-reviewing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2004\/08\/14\/the-seamy-underbelly-of-reviewing\/","title":{"rendered":"The seamy underbelly of reviewing"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve always wondered whether and how large companies coordinated touting for their products in online fora. I remember fake Amazon book reviews going back to 1998; even today, most books get so few reviews that it pays to throw in a few fake reviews from friends of the author.<\/p>\n

For years, it seemed as though only individuals<\/b> bothered to do this — again, see the small number of reviews for most products. But they’re wising up; just today I ran across someone who is clearly now a professional “Yahoo movies” reviewer, trained in the ways of Writing Like an Enthusiastic Average Joe, Proper Mispellign, and Mimcking a Hard-core Fan. His Yahoo user profile<\/a> lists just three reviews, two of them terrible, but I’d guess that this person has a hundred accounts just like it… and I wonder what a review like his Alien v. Predator review is worth. <\/p>\n

It reads like a film-industry pro who’s had just enough training not to give it away — mentions “the Novel”, the director, and the movie names by abbreviations that few fans use, but that someone who uses the term hundreds of times a week might. And, hmm,<\/p>\n

\nI strongly believe that there will be an extended version on DVD
\nbut that’s just a thought of mine, so don’t take it as a fact.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

by the same articulate guy who then closes with<\/p>\n

\nMy Final thought!
\nI’M GONNA WATCH THIS BABY 5 MORE TIMES!!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the film he’s writing about? Right, Alien v. Predator<\/i>. About which real reviewers tend to say things like “you can just burn a ten dollar bill and get more enjoyment out of that then sitting through this horrible movie.” (damianisnice)<\/p>\n

He’s not the only toadie out there. And there must be lots of reasons to be a toad other than being paid for it. But Damian makes the good point that anyone who gives AvP high marks is likely associated with the film somehow, and there are a *lot* of A reviews for this one; check out the list<\/a> and you’ll find some reviewers with… unusual histories. Some traits shared by the best of them:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. no personal information; only a few sporadic reviews; could be one of a long list of dummy accounts… OR lots<\/i> of detailed personal information, w\/conflicting information coming out in individual reviews to make the reviewer fit more squarely into the target audience (See chickmagnet, below);
    \n

    \nFor instance, chickmagnet<\/a>, whose profile says hes “19” and heading into the Air Force, but who claims to be 15 when reviewing SpongeBob Squarepants<\/a>.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

  2. lots of A+\/F movie reviews the day\/weekend a movie is released (don’t forget that an F review for the other movies in your space is almost as good as an A review for your own)\n
  3. PR speak in the middle of a rambling, misspelled teenage post.
    \n

    this battle between the Queen and the Predator and scientist is much more fast-paced, suspensful and action-packed, that is actually the way the whole movie was compared to other Alien and Predator films, more fast-paced, slightly more suspenseful, and much more action. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

  4. Combine detailed knowledge about backstage details (never EVER misspell the director’s name) with atrocious orthography.
    \n

    The way Paul W. Anderson created the story was just fenominle.<\/i> (bushead<\/a>)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

  5. Don’t forget to hype the DVD. “I can’t wait for the DVD!”, “I hear there’s going to be a director’s cut DVD, that would be so cool”, etc.\n
  6. Don’t forget the hype, period. “This was, without a doubt, one of the best movies I have ever seen.” “i don’t care what others say it the best movie i’ve ever seen!”\n
  7. Compare favorably with a recent major success (“I, Robot” seems to be the fave here)\n<\/ol>\n

    Perhaps the most interesting upside of this look at the AvP reviews, is what it suggests about other recently-touted films — Fahrenheit 9\/11, Punisher, and Spiderman 2 tended to get similar boosts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’ve always wondered whether and how large companies coordinated touting for their products in online fora. I remember fake Amazon book reviews going back to 1998; even today, most books get so few reviews that it pays to throw in a few fake reviews from friends of the author. For years, it seemed as though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-null"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-ak","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}