Who doesn’t love sharing their opinions online about things they feel passionate about? Every person with a phone, TikTok account, or Yelp profile is automatically granted permission to share their review. Everyone wants to tell the world what’s good and what’s garbage. From movies to restaurants to the newest iPhone, the internet is constantly drowning in reviews.
Once upon a time, we used to turn to professional critics to receive a well-informed review of a product or service, but somewhere along the way, they were pushed to the sidelines. Without them, we have slowly lost the deeper conversations that help art, food, and culture actually evolve.
When something new is introduced into society, whether a new tech product or film release, we seek context before deciding if we want to invest time or money in it. Nowadays, there’s an easy process to find that context online. All you need to do is pick up your smartphone, search the product on Google, YouTube, Reddit, or even TikTok, and choose a plethora of reviews made by so-called “reviewers.” You can find out everything some stranger online thought about the new iPhone, or how thousands of people rated the third Avatar movie out of five stars, and form your own opinion based on their experience.
We live in a culture that values immediacy and relatability over expertise. Why wait to read a carefully argued review when you can scroll through 50 TikToks already saying the product is “mid” in under a minute?