Reviews are an interesting thing. I’ve written a lot of them over the years and I’ve read even more. I trust that the team here at ToughPigs are doing their due diligence and have the ability to articulate their points in a fair and unbiased manner. I certainly try to do that myself. So when it comes to a proper, reputable publication, I’ll trust a review. Yes, I called us a reputable publication, please ignore all the times we’ve eaten weird foods.
The issue is now that ANYONE can review ANYTHING at ANY TIME. Twitter (or X or DumpsterFire, whatever he’s calling it now) is notorious for this. Facebook too. And for the most part, these are fair, fine, balanced reviews. But, if you really know where to look, there are some hidden gems.
To find some, I recently typed in ‘Sesame Street’ to Google, clicked on Reviews, and then filtered out any that weren’t 1 Star. I wasn’t looking for them to defend the show, I was looking because I was sure there would be some unhinged content, and boy, did it deliver.
There are some 1 Star reviews that are obviously trolling, and that’s totally fine. I get the edgelords sitting in their parents basements who think it’s funny at 2:45am between episodes of Doctor Who to write ‘Elmo is a loser’ in to a Google review and send it to their friends. I’d have probably done that at 19, too. The thing is, there were some reviews that I’m not sure are meant to be funny. And I’d like to share some of them with you now.
Ah, yes, Satan’s been running HBO for a while now (he’s the one who canceled Minx).
A lot of the 1 Star reviews are your typical Republican nonsense. ‘Oh Big Bird told my kid about vaccinations’, ‘Oh Nina’s brother is married to a man’, ‘Oh Little Murray Sparkles told me to vote Biden’ (I made that last one up). There are a lot about men in dresses, which confused me. Are they talking about Bob dressed as Prairie Dawn? Or Snuffy in a pretty ballerina dress? Or are they talking about Billy Porter wearing a dress in ‘Friends With A Penguin’? Granted, I actaully complained about that too, because I wanna look that good!
Okay, let’s ignore the ignorants and keep looking at the unhinged.
Right, so Google reviews are crazy town banana pants. I continuously laughed at ‘(Amount) people found this helpful. Honestly, I’m reminded of Jim Henson’s famous reply;
I thought I’d give Facebook a look, considering people are free to writer longer pieces there and we might learn a thing or two. And learn we did! All about how to turn a small investment into a larger return!
And this was THE ENTIRE REVIEW PAGE. For some reason there’s some sort of algorithm in this specific scam that recommends Sesame Street, then tells you all about how you can turn $600 in to $6000 (something that would be super handy right about now). I scrolled through a full 12 months worth of reviews on the Sesame Street Facebook page and I found one – ONE- that wasn’t a scam. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SELL NFTs, SESAME STREET!
So, maybe I was wrong after all and reviews mean nothing. Maybe they mean everything. Maybe you should send me $200 and I’ll turn it into $305! (That’s the current exchange rate between the US and Australia).
By Jarrod Fairclough – Jarrod@ToughPigs.com
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