Online reviews make us all clients of rubbish research

Not everyone’s happy about the culture of customer feedback that the internet has created.

In Wired a few weeks back, Chris Colin wrote about the culture of reviews and whether it’s spoiling the web for everyone.

“The internet-begotten abundance of absolutely everything has given rise to a parallel universe of stars, rankings, most-recommended lists, and other valuations designed to help us sort the wheat from all the chaff we’re drowning in,” writes Colin.

But whatever happened to discovering things for ourselves? Colin fears that this culture of critique will “curtail serendipity, adventure, and idiotic floundering”, and deny us of the act of choosing independently, which is “a fundamental expression of the self”.

Suddenly it’s as if the whole of the population, on the cusp of vital decisions like whether it’s wise to invest in the second series of Gossip Girl when you still haven’t finished watching Grey’s Anatomy, have become clients of really bad market research. The tabulation is sloppy, the sample is all over the place, the results are inconclusive, and no one really understands you well enough to offer any useful insight. You’re left in a funk of indecision.

Many a time I have found myself browsing an online store, salivating over a CD or book that I might buy, only to read the (inevitably) mixed customer reviews, and feeling my excitement give way to nagging doubt.

In fact, the online purchases I enjoy most are the ones I make after coming home late from the pub – ignoring how other customers feel about it and ordering whatever I’m excited about at that particular moment, never mind how frivolous or embarrasing. This also adds a brief sense of surprise when a package lands on your doorstep that you only dimly remember ordering, containing a product that the well-meaning reviewers of Amazon could never have reached a consensus on.

I’m not suggesting that people should inebriate themselves before making important business decisions, but I do think that the way we use online reviews can tell us something about how clients feel when faced with research that doesn’t properly answer their questions. Information that hasn’t been filtered, structured and thought through can be worse than no information at all.