It seems that the peak of democratic society is the ability of each and every participant to 'vote' and not only vote, but to express their opinions on everything from movies to vaseline to vacation spots to tents, and even people if a certain new app has anything to say about it, and worse, we seem to hold our own particular view as 'the view' the world can't live without and that our opinion is somehow more important than merely a personal preference. There is nothing wrong with reviewing products and services, in fact it can be quite helpful to your fellow consumers and even let the companies know what they could improve or what you like. The danger comes when we assume our opinion about everything matters and is so important that life cannot possibly go on without it and that anyone who disagrees with our opinion is somehow maligning us, when they only had a different experience or have different taste than us. We each want to be the world's foremost wine critic/restaurant reviewer/movie guru…we have neither the expertise nor the time to be an expert in everything nor is the world big enough for 1.5 million experts on baby shampoo.
Besides our personal hubris in our own rather mundane reviews, the other problem with 'the review' is that half the people leaving a review shouldn't be writing one because either they never actually used the product, they didn't read or misunderstood the instructions, or they had some freak experience (say with the shipping company) that they then blame on the product. I love the recipe reviews on a certain site where the reviewer usually changes most of the recipe and then reviews their version rather than the original. Or the people that are against a certain 'thing' who leave bad reviews for books about 'the thing' but have never actually read the book, they are against the subject not that particular book. Or the dog that has an allergic reaction to something in a certain product, it isn't that the product is bad but rather that particular dog is sensitive to it, but as far as that particular owner is concerned, that product is deadly! Or your boyfriend dumps you at a particular restaurant and now the whole chain is bad…the list goes on. In reviewing a product, one should, well, review the product or service or recipe or whatever, not some aspect completely unrelated to the actual quality of the product in question. If you change the recipe, messed up the assembly, are using it for a purpose for which it was not intended, never read the book or saw the movie, had shipping problems, ordered the wrong size…whatever, please don't use 'the reviews' to vent your frustration; that's what Facebook is for!
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