Just How Useful?

I don’t do a lot on-line, so I’ll be the first to admit, I’m behind the times.  That’s why I’m bringing my question to you folks.  Here’s what happened…

One Reviewer’s Opinions

Last week, I was considering buying a DVD of an anime series I already owned as a gift for a friend.  I went to Amazon to see if they had it and noticed there were two different packages.   Since I wanted to make sure that I had the right set and I found Amazon’s summary notes a little cryptic, I clicked on the on-line reviews as a means of seeing if there was any advantage to one package over another.  I started skimming, then found myself continuing to read in a sort of fascinated horror.

I know this particular series very well but, if I had been a newcomer, I would have had no idea what to think.  I might even have thought that two completely different series with the same title were being reviewed.  That’s how varied the comments were.

The animation was rated as artistic and creative.  It was lambasted as lousy and cut rate.  The music was singled out as boring and repetitious.  The music was praised as wonderful and dynamic.  The story line was assessed as provocative and thoughtful.  The story line was dismissed as limited and episodic.  And the characters…  I swear I wouldn’t have known them!  Even the reviewers who liked them tended to be reductive in their assessment of some very complex personalities.

So how useful are these sites that permit reviews anyhow?

Writers have a love-hate relationship with on-line reviewing sites, especially those with no limits and no moderation.  Everyone has heard tales of fans and/or writers who have taken advantage of the anonymity to use multiple accounts to pump up their favorites and downgrade works they view as rivals.  Since it only takes a single one-star review to lower a book or movie’s overall average, this is pretty creepy.

A few years ago, I heard from a reliable source that one writer deliberately set out to trash any book he viewed as competition for his own forthcoming novel.  His enthusiasm for his project drew attention to itself, creating a trail that eventually led to his unmasking and the reviews being removed.  Even so, he certainly did damage.  It’s enough to make a potential victim’s skin crawl.

At Bubonicon a couple of weeks ago, Guest of Honor Tim Powers talked about how he obsessively reads his on-line reviews.  He was very funny as he talked about ranting and raving, thinking up complex revenges upon those who didn’t understand his work.  He asked me if I read my on-line reader reviews.  I admitted that I don’t look at them.   I tend to get too upset when someone misses the point entirely or, worse, gets some crucial fact completely wrong, then chews my book apart for not doing what they think it should have done – but did in fact do!

It would not be good form to fight back, but I am a fighter, so it’s best not to put myself in the position of fuming quietly (or not so quietly, at least as far as Jim is concerned).

Even with this anime series I was looking at, I found myself pushing down an impulse to write a volume of commentary, pointing out the deep, philosophical underpinnings of the recursive story.  However, looking at the site’s chronological organization, I knew what I wrote would soon be lost.  For a short time, my piece might be the first someone would see, but eventually it would be buried.

So, just how useful are these on-line reviews?  If you were looking for a good quality assessment of a book or movie, where would you go?  Having had this bad experience, I’m curious as to what a tyro like myself may be missing.