Okay. You’ve got a whole slider of selections on the Internet Movie Database, YouTube, Goodreads.com, Gamespot, Amazon, and others…. Why do some people choose to continuously blast or harp on mediocre products? I envision scenarios where a person becomes absolutely enthralled with a movie/game/book whatever, maybe being introduced to a genre they didn’t know existed, maybe connecting on a personal level with main characters’ victories and defeats, maybe a specific movie dredging the memory of an ex they just can’t seem to shake; these people then saying to themselves, “HEY, I gotta tell the world the specific numeral I believe to be associated with the quality of this experience. And it happens to be the absolute lowest score possible, like, on the same par with other absolutely horrendous and depressing pieces of work that I’ve seen. And gosh, this happens to me a lot!” Who are these inexperienced whiners consistently bemoaning the total failures or epic wins of just your average action movie or shallow book, one that is more deserving of 4’s and 6’s than the root canal (1) of the media or even the lottery winning (10) experience?

4 year olds.
Only 4 year olds can see the world in such all-or-nothing terms, the type that will kick and scream if you serve them some broccoli or a sammich with the crust still intact. I refuse to believe that there are this many adults online who genuinely feel the “every moment was excruciating” or “every moment was a liquid ecstasy IV drip into my nearest artery”. That’s what the top and bottom ratings in any system are for. I’m not asking for a non-committal middle-option approach to everything, but sweet baby Jesus, stack the item in question against an appreciation of your previous knowledge with similar media. 4 year olds don’t have the depth of experiences adults do so if the internet is, in-fact, composed greatly of a huge population of 4 year olds, I sincerely apologize. (This would possibly account for the massive sales of “brand-new” iterations of easy-to-use products such as the Ipad.) The Facebook Like/Dislike system is probably more appropriate for your thought process. If you are a 4 year old that has somehow stumbled across one of these rating sites, please desist and stop poking buttons at random until you have sampled the joys and dregs the separate cultures have to offer.

Preteens?
I dunno if it applies. It’s a guess. I’m so out of touch with this generation. I remember the feelings of indecision and angst. Y’know, all that stereotypical emotional garbage and baggage. That would definitely be me in my time. Everything was LOOOVE this, and HAAAATE that. There was like, no liking or stuff and junk. That may be SO 1990’s, but that’s how we expressed ourselves. Maybe 4 year olds aren’t the only ones…. I’m not certain. Everything is cleaner, easier, more “round-edged and plastic-y” than I remember from my own era, so this is just a finger-waggling assumption in a general direction. The illiterate text-speech that accompanies some of these reviews I’m seeing leads me in ur direction, though I rescind if I’m in error. My advice for the gleeful 10-starrers: I’m glad you enjoyed it and would recommend to “like, everybody”, but tone it down a notch. Stats are suffering. Be honest and articulate. Dropping a point from 10 to 9 because of a feature you actually dislike now that you think about it represents this kind of articulation. Any redeeming qualities? Maybe a 2 is in order….

Miserable People.
Hey, you’re miserable. I get it. I’ve been there before too. But if you’re miserable because of life, why trash something that I enjoy and actually make the attempt to interpret? I use those rating systems to determine if something is any good. Because of mopey Debbie-Downers like you, I have to guess-timate if the .4 star difference between a 2.2 product and a 2.6 product is worth my time or if you just have a vendetta against Sony, televisions, the shape of stars themselves, or even your own personal Maker. I’m having to compare entire site averages to each other because I find a site where NOTHING is appropriately marked in the scale intended, where a 2 star is the average instead of a 3, where product-makers have no real feedback on how they’re doing or how to improve for the next go around. Believe it or not, this will affect somebody. Now, if you’re miserable because of the thing you’re trashing i.e. books, movies, or whatever, WHY ARE YOU STILL WATCHING OR BUYING THEM? You play 10 games (assumption) and 3 of those games impact you enough to spark a review. But each of those three games gets a 1 star review?! What kind of self-loathing game-buying approach do you have, where 30% of the games you purchase are the video-equivalent of getting bamboo splints hammered underneath your nails? Oh, is it the OTHER miserable people out there writing their own mis-informative bad reviews that direct you to make such terrible purchases? Imagine that.

Trolls.
Yeah, I know you. I have met your kind before, well digitally at least. Some of your antics are actually quite funny, but you can overdo it. I admit, I feed the trolls on occasion, either by laughing at the bullshit or providing ammo when I know better. Hell, even this post could be considered “Troll-food”.  But some of your shit is just unfocused and dumb. I saw a game called Street Cleaning Simulator that got a massive troll-blast of positive reviews. End result, the game’s score was close to a 10 when Gamespot gave it less than a 2. I laughed so hard when reading the reviews, ones where it said sweeping the streets of the virtual city were akin to seeing Jesus or being described as orgasmic and quote “This game > Sex”. Classic. Funny. Now when you do this on your own to shit I actually consider buying or watching, it’s not a knee-slapping hilarious moment for you or for me. It’s just mildly God-damn annoying, and yes this is me being mildy annoyed. If you get your jollies from this kind of “prank”, by all means, continue. I’ll give a kudos for being so easily entertained. However, I’m going to deduct two kudos for penalties of being “lame” and “unoriginal”. That leaves you trolls with a net gain of one negative kudo, meaning you may owe someone somewhere a nutritional snack bar.

Asshats.
You write an incendiary review, USE A LOT OF CAPS, maybe harp on one particular thing that didn’t match your wet-dreams of insatiable expectations. Yeah yeah, the director/author/whatever should burn because they cast a certain actor or didn’t release a book fast enough for you to wantonly rip it apart with reckless abandon. To spot an asshat: they’re the ones usually bragging about how they’re glad they didn’t have to pay for the stupid thing they’re lampooning, or churn that irrelevant little grain of sand over and over into a worthless black pearl of hatred and disgust and vomit the vitriol into a website. I’m guilty of this. Hell, I’ve got a feeling we all have done a little impromptu ass-hattery at some time. But the professional ass-hats, the ones who’ve made incessant careers out of this are the targets of this paragraph. You guys suck, and need to get real. Did you hate the thing that got one star? Probably, but were there seriously no redeeming qualities? Is this the absolute worst thing that ever graced this particular media? Come on. At least explain why this thing ranks lower than any Pauly Shore movie or lower than any Stephen King novel.

I cringed at Zoolander, even walked out of the theater for the first time ever, but I wouldn’t rank it a 1 per se. Maybe a 3-ish considering they had decent cinematography and I had seen all of the funny parts from the movie previews. Past that, it had nothing, hence the low score. Want to see a 1 level movie? Look up almost anything that Mystery Science Theater 3000 has spoofed, though even then you had your gems in the rough like the creepy Devil Doll, Future War (it’s so bad it’s good) and others. Oh this 50″ plasma television is the worst you’ve ever seen? Oh really? No satisfaction to be had, even from a discounted price for an inferior product? And the fact that it’s an effin’ giant screen with fluid picture? This game is the worst? Oh really? Does that mean you played it to the end and experienced all the different modes and multiplayer? Still terrible after that thorough and difficult testing? This book is the best? I’m assuming you’re a literary scholar or have at least more than 5 books under your belt this decade, a bevy of comparitive material to make an assessment from. Because if you can’t trust the full-fledged recommendation of ditzyblonde14, who can you trust?

Missing from this chart are negative stars, hearts, and dick drawings.

You are incredibly entitled to your opinion…. I’m just trying to change your opinion, or rather, your impressions of your initial opinion. Since the mind is not a simplified on/off toggle, this is a call for reason, in this and other features of existence. The 1 and 10 stars are there for a purpose, certainly. Use them. But not all the time! IMDB tries to combat this tendency to exaggerate with weighted user averages based on expectations of extreme voting, including a demographic breakdown on age and for gender. An anime site I found one time mentioned how it handled movies differently if they had less votes instead of the insanely popular main-stream stuff, cross-comparing the lower counts with a formula that kept them in the running with other films that had been seen millions of times. That’s a great way to combat a skewing rating system as long as the math is right. Personally, evidenced by my own webpage, you can tell that I don’t like to rank things in my “reviews” since I find that a paragraph or two can communicate meaningful and lasting impressions while a number just conveys an arbitrary quality. The stuff I try to check out isn’t that one-dimensional and I’d rather people take what is relevant to them. Still, rankings have their uses. Video games are typically broken down by sub-features, (graphics, sound, gameplay, etc.), a cool system that I don’t typically see outside of the odd technology site highlight. This alone could help straighten out the jackasses fudging the system, but they could always just give it flat 1’s. Anyways, as it turns out, “average” ratings aren’t as prevalent on the interwebs as you might expect. Instead, we’ve got a non-bellcurve of scattershot media and product scores that aren’t always, but can be, helpful or accurate.

For the record, I wouldn’t bitch about the information being accurate if I didn’t care what people thought on products and services I’m contemplating using. I just wish the “thought” part was better represented in some cases. I use a membership with E-rewards to take surveys in exchange for gift cards. With me being set off by such a trivial thing, I can only imagine what those people hosting the 20 minute long surveys feel when their targeted reviews and consumer input questionnaires come back with nothing but pages and pages of “I don’t knows”, 1’s, and Not Applicables. AND they have to pay people for those opinions. That would drive me nuts.