All Reviews Need to Be Taken With a Grain of Salt

I’ve been disturbed recently reading reviews on the internet across a myriad of topics. The three biggest offenders for me are reviews on books, reviews on over the counter products and reviews on recipes. These reviews are put up on the web where the anonymity of the internet allows consumers to post how they feel about a product, whether or not that person is even credible. Many times they are not.

One Star Book Reviews: Most of the time if you see someone post a one star review they are either a troll (a person out to simply be vindictive to that author, or they just want to make a nasty statement to hurt someone). Why do I say this? Because if you READ the review, you’ll realize the reader many times NEVER even read the book, didn’t go more than two pages, reviews another book and mixed them up, or is upset that they thought they bought a romance and got a thriller. I kid you not. I’ve seen people give one star reviews because they bought a book in the wrong genre and are blaming the author. I saw another person give a book a one star review because they bought Book #5 or #6 in an epic series and were upset they didn’t know the history of the series because they never purchased the other previous novels.

Now, I’m not saying people aren’t entitled to say they hated a book, but make sure the review is solid. Is it poorly written? Filled with grammatical errors? Did they not like the plot or heroine? If there is a solid reason for that one star, okay, if not move on.

One Star on OTC (over the counter products like aspirin, laxatives, allergy meds, etc): I saw this yesterday all over amazon. People giving reviews for medications. The big thing I noticed is that most people claiming one star reviews over-medicated themselves each and every time and were trashing the products for the side effects. One medication said take 1-3 pills with lots of water. (and to START with one) These people went right ahead and claimed they took three pills and were upset they got very bad side effects like their insides were about to explode. Even when the packaging said that you should start with one, but you CAN take up to three if your symptoms keep persisting. I saw one star after one star review, all of these people took too much medication and then blamed the product. Others already have problems where they shouldn’t even take this product in the first place, others didn’t drink enough water, milk, food, with the medications and blamed the product. It’s odd to me that people will feel this need to post in this fashion. Where is their own responsibility in this? People must be participatory in their own healthcare issues. Be smart.

One star recipe reviews. I’m a cook, so I read reviews on recipes all the time. I know enough about cooking to be able to look at a recipe and adjust it if I need to, but when I see a one star review for something and the person didn’t have half of the ingredients in the recipe and instead substituted and THEN writes a one star review that says “this wasn’t tasty at all,” well, I have zero sympathy. I didn’t have sugar, so I used X, and I didn’t have nuts, so I used X and I didn’t have wine so I used X. How in the world can you write a bad review of a recipe if you didn’t use the ingredients listed or follow the directions?

Some of my favorite one star comments:

The meat was tough, but I didn’t have enough time to cook it for the instructed 5-6 hours, so I just upped the temperature on the stove. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

I didn’t have tomatoes so I used bell peppers instead. (gee, are we magicians that we can turn bell peppers into a decadent tomato sauce without tomatoes?)

I know the recipe called for fennel, but it was too fennel-y for me. And I also don’t like fennel in the first place.

The thing is, think before you review something. People look at reviews, but we are starting to be smart enough to realize some of our reviewers are not credible. If you haven’t even purchased or read more than a page of a book, and slam it, well, you have no credibility. If you slam a product because you didn’t take the correct dosing and overmedicated yourself and now have side effects, that’s your problem. If you do a recipe and substitute ingredients and are upset with the end result, that is again your problem.

I think people just don’t like to follow directions. They want to beat to their own drummer and get upset when things don’t go their way. Accountability folks.