What is Reviews Done Right?
What makes a “Review Done Right”? The answer is at once simple and complex. Simply: it is a review by someone that is not financially incentivized to tell you that a product is good. In today’s internet landscape, a simple Google search for “Best X” where X may be something as benign as a set of wrenches to as ‘complex’ as an electric vehicle will invariably yield countless listicles full of sponsored products or, at the very least, referral links – which incentivize the linker if the ‘linkee’ buys a product using that link. Everyone is in on this grift, seemingly.
But why does this matter? Well this is where it gets more complex… What’s the big deal if people (or corporations) are using referral links and occasionally making a buck for themselves by giving you promoted links? For many people reading this the answer is obvious – because of course you’ve been through this before. The answer is that you invariably are persuaded, through marketing language, buzzwords, and general platitudes, that a product is the best. And then, when you get that product, you immediately find flaws or constraints not previously mentioned in those short or otherwise biased listicles or articles. But that’s not the whole answer…
Listen – everyone is trying to make a buck. I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t think there was a few dollars to be made by it (though we’ll talk about how I plan to monetize this page and what you can do to reject the onslaught of corporatism and fast-fashion / fast-tooling / fast-anything that is besetting our current consumerist environment, even from this site). But not everyone has the same principles underlying their motive to make money.
Yes, I hope this page makes money some day. It doesn’t currently (not by a mile), I doubt it will for many years, but I’ll welcome it when it does. But in the meantime, and especially once it does, my underlying motives will be the same: provide the best resources you can possibly find to make informed decisions to save yourself time, money, and headaches down the line when buying consumer products.
How do I intend to do this? That answer is also simple… I’m a phenomenal consumer. Of products, sure, but also of media. Whether that is online discourse through forums and review sites, or popular creators on YouTube, Twitter, or even the hellscape of paid promotional websites. I have always been skeptical, and that instinct has guided me well in sussing out the less scrupulous reviewers and websites out there and honing in on the true zealots for quality and/or price.
My criteria for what makes a “Review Done Right” are simple:
- A reviewer must not make their reviews based on any monetary incentive.
- This does not mean that reviewers may not be compensated – quite the opposite. I don’t mind reviewers that openly acknowledge that they are being paid for their work. But reviews must be reviews. Information cannot be tainted by money. This may be subjective in some instances, and debate will certainly follow… but I welcome it.
- Reviewers MUST provide a basis by which they are providing their review
- Pros and cons are bullshit. Let’s be honest. I can provide a pro and con for literally anything you throw at me. The true test of a product is its performance and the metrics that back it up – whether that is in hard data or in demonstration.
- Money isn’t everything. Yes – we are all at different places in life. Yes, we all have more or less money to spend on something. But there is a fundamental misreading of the market in terms of what is important to consumers. Reviews wax poetic about the cost to performance of tools, but don’t quantify. Reviews forget that the human life expectancy is 80+ years and expect you to consume, consume, consume, until time immemorial without giving a single thought to whether a single product could last you as long or longer.
- Quality = Longevity
- Full stop.
- Among other things…
- The point of this stupid ‘salacious’ bullet is to say that we’ve gotten away from the buy-it-once, or buy-it-for-life mentality. We don’t consider longevity nearly as much as we should any more. I have tools, appliances, and even bed frames that are older than I am, but these wouldn’t be considered in today’s world. Why? Well they’re things that don’t require updating or matintence. They don’t have planned obsolescence as a key (internal) point for them. Again – I’m an avowed consumerist. I buy what makes my life better. But I want to know that what I buy damn well better last until I feel it should fail. If I feel I got my money’s worth, it’s worth it. And I trust the reviewers I vet to feel the same.