Reviewage: The Culture of Online Opinions

by G. Kim Blank (December 2011)

These reviews are the work of neither professionals nor experts. These are just people who take time to put down their thoughts for webmanity. But why?

The effortlessness with which things, largely uncensored, can be added to the Web or to existing sites is correspondingly astonishing, and a part of this is manifest in that phenomenon mentioned above, something we might call the culture of reviewage: the opportunity for and desire of Web users to offer their opinions on just about everything.

or smart. It may be what happens when the fallacy of instant expertise becomes confused with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A movie gets seen; suddenly everyone wants the same voice as Roger Ebert. A new band arrives on the scene, and some obscure digidit on an equally obscure blog imagines rivaling the pronouncements of Rolling Stone. A new organic berry bagel is offered at some midwest urban café, and some reviewer, with unmitigated seriousness of purpose and righteousness, writes like they have a place on the Food Channel. Does anyone care? Is anyone listening?

Delusions of grandeur, or merely the inflated drivel of the dull?

In the merging of these two tyrannies, the proliferation of reviewage arguably amounts to the proliferation of a shared dumbing-down. An allusion to a rather cruel running skit on Saturday Night Live seems appropriate: the overwhelming amount of reviewage facilitated by the Web may be an instance of collective lowered expectations.

The culture of reviewage will no doubt thrive so long as the Web provides access and opportunity. It is no secret that in some cases it is in the interests of those who provide reviewing opportunities that you, the user, stay on the site as long as possible, as well as that you return to it as often as possible. Bucks and bytes invariably connect.

Best, perhaps, that the final word be left with a real digitdit.

So there we have it. Ronbaby acknowledges that Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner, knows something, but ronbaby approves neither of his journalistic style nor his apparently unrestrained criticism of those who caused certain large economic problems.

G. Kim Blank has published widely in both academic and in popular venues, and sometimes acts as a media consultant. He teaches at the University of Victoria.

 To comment on this article, please click here.

To help New English Review continue to publish thought provoking articles such as this one, please click here.