So, in my jobseeker wilderness I am finding lots of time to read and listen to music. I very often read user reviews and check ratings before buying a lot of the stuff I shop for online and I'm wondering why. I've written a couple of album reviews on iTunes and rated many, many things on Amazon (although I've never written a review on there yet). And I'm realising I am never, ever completely impartial. I tend only to write a review for an album or artist I am hopelessly devoted to, and wish other people shared the love I do for them. And when I rate stuff, it's always based on my personal perspective and very rarely a straightforward reflection of the literary or musical merits of the work in question - which I'm not entirely sure I'd be qualified to give anyway.
Now this may be absolutely the norm and completely to be expected, but it does call into question the value a business, writer or musician should place on UGC of this type. In my previous incarnation in Digital Marketing, the consistent message was 'content is king' and, depending on what you're trying to achieve, volume may well be good enough, depending on where it's published, regardless of the sentiment. But if you're truly trying to build an online brand, a reputation and a community, promoting (a) product(s) or service(s), then
what people are saying is at least as important as the fact that they're saying something. Some of the tools that monitor this type of thing include 'sentiment analysis' for precisely this reason. But are there really expectations that content created by non-experts is actually valuable and to be valued? Should ratings given by people who don't supply a supporting review (like 99.9% of mine) be given any weight, when they may be disguising or distorted by the individual's predisposition?
Some specific cases in point may help illustrate this a bit better.
1. I will never, ever, ever buy so much as s single track by Oasis. I may enjoy some of their music, but I think they're basically foul scum and I will not fund their lifestyle.
2. I saw the movie 'The Hunger Games' and was so utterly repelled by the central theme of a society that sacrifices children (making them slaughter each other) in payment for the perceived transgressions of their ancestors, that I vowed not to buy the books. But then I did. And very well written they are too. Exciting plots, a variety of characters and personalities that stand out properly as individuals and whose actions are completely as you'd expect based on those personalities. And yet, until the very end of the final book and via a 'meet the old boss, same as the new boss' plot point, that hideousness behind it all was unrelenting. So I didn't rate them very highly, but never explained why. Until now. In a place where it's really irrelevant.
3. An even stronger version of 2. I love, love, love K.E. Mills' '
Wizard' series. And her '
Kingmaker Kingbreaker/Fisherman's Children' series, published under her other non de plume, Karen Miller. So I bought her 'Godspeaker' trilogy, also published under Miller. And much of it is taken up with descriptions of and tales about a society that is completely and utterly lacking in any redeeming features whatsoever. She builds a whole world to set the narrative in, and does so brilliantly. She tells the story beautifully. But, again, I spent much of the time wishing she'd either change the setting to the not-so-bad other continent, or destroy the entire society in a fiery apocalypse. I hated the people, the place, their beliefs and their way of life and this completely tainted my experience. If I was to rate them (I haven't yet), I'd feel pressured to give them at least a 4, which is what they deserve based on the quality of the writing and the story itself. But I'd want to give them 2. And then not explain why.
4. In almost exactly the opposite situation to 2. and 3. I worship and adore Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels. Her other stuff not so much. But these are crime comedy works of genius, with some entirely wonderful characters and she can't write them quickly enough. They are not great literary works, but they are joymaking and sometimes that's all you want. And I will always rate them with a 5. I have imagined them being made into films and chosen who would play each character. And now they've made the first one into a film, with none of the people I had in mind (who, realistically, are all too old. Or dead.) But I want, no
need, to see all the others. So I would rate the film with a 5 as well in the (remote, given the critical reception and box office performance of the first) hope that this should come to pass.
So there you have it. I know what I like and will always look out for new stuff from musicians/bands/writers I'm already devoted to. When looking for new stuff to try, I will refer to ratings and reviews by other people. But it worries me that people might be looking at mine and basing decisions on them! If we're talking about a product and I can decide whether it works how it should, failed to fall to bits within 5 minutes of delivery and doesn't eat batteries, fine. But when there's a high level of subjective judgement involved, do people realise this and take it into account? I do, but still. And if you're a business trying to build your business based on this type of feedback, where do you start? I guess the key thing here is to
engage with the people contributing to this online body of content about you and yours. There are so many ways of doing this these days and you have to be all over
all of them. And I'd
love that job.
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