Reviews and (Dis)Honesty

I bought a new car this summer, and before I had even signed the paperwork I was told that when the customer survey arrives I should try to give the seller "all 5s," and that if I couldn't, I should talk to him first to explain why. The ostensible reason to talk to the seller is so that he can improve on his performances in future, but my guess is that it is actually to guilt the buyer into giving the seller all 5s, either so she doesn't have to talk to the seller again, or because she is convinced that to not give him that score would be somehow unfair to him. I passively aggressively refused to complete the survey, despite at least semi-weekly requests to do so. I do feel a bit rude, but "if you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all," as they say.

In the world of internet book publishing, the customer review may be even more important than the silly auto survey I won't do. With the demise of both physical book stores and newspaper literary review columns, one must either magically come upon a book after an Amazon or Google search, or see some sort of online review of it in order to purchase and read it. The online review has become all pervasive--I can review not just my favorite (and least favorite) book, but my bank, bowling alley, and Brazilian restaurant with little effort. These items and places want me to review them, and they sometimes even give incentives for it.

Of course, no one is supposed to buy favorable reviews, because money makes people do things they might not otherwise, like lie, saying they had the best meal ever when it was actually lukewarm and bland. Of course, just because no one is supposed to doesn't mean no one does. A recent NYT article discusses just this subject: a man started a business in which he sold favorable book reviews, often multiple reviews for the same book, to fledgling authors who wanted to become noticed online in order for their books to sell. Some authors purchased the service saying they didn't need the reviews to be positive, but most expected to buy positive reviews. The author explains that
Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth. They purport to be testimonials of real people, even though some are bought and sold just like everything else on the commercial Internet.

We know that advertising exists to sell us a product, and most of us can see the falsehoods in claims advertisements make. A review, on the other hand, is not created by a marketer and is not automatically positive, so we are doubly swayed when we see a positive review. A problem arises, though, when the reviews are not only falsely positive but also based upon nothing; Todd Rutherford appears to have fabricated reviews for clients of books he had not read, in essence scamming both the consumer and his client. Rutherford explains that “Objective consumers who purchase a book based on positive reviews will end up posting negative reviews if the work is not good,” but he apparently has no problem selling those objective consumers the bad book in the first place. We've all read a bad book, and few will go hungry over the cost of that book, but I think I might feel rather betrayed by a terrible book with overwhelmingly positive reviews. 

Plagiarist Suspended!

According to this article, renowned columnist and public intellectual Fareed Zakaria has been suspended from Time and CNN after it was discovered that several of his recent pieces are stolen from others. Discuss!

Faking Your Death: Harder than it Used to Be?

I have no statistics on rates of success with faking one's death for insurance money and/or to escape debt, but a recent story suggests that it may not be too easy these days. A New York man, apparently aided by his son, went "missing" off of Jones beach two weeks ago but was located a few days later when he was issued a speeding ticket in South Carolina. It sounds as though the scheme may have been half-baked, but with today's surveillance and electronic tracking methods, far more elaborate preparations would be necessary than this man and his son evidently made.

I'm reminded of a film I watched (pictured above), in which a man (played by the always satisfyingly creepy Anthony Perkins) miraculously and secretly survives a plane crash for which he has purchased flight insurance and terrorizes his estranged wife (Sophia Loren) until she agrees to fraudulently collect the insurance money and split it with him to be rid of him forever. In this case, a man simply faked his death because the opportunity presented itself; he used luck to his advantage and was (nearly) successful in acquiring the insurance money. It is surprisingly easy for Sophia Loren to collect it; further, Anthony Perkins can presumably chuck his passport and live incognito in Europe. Raymond Roth is probably a desperate idiot, but I can't help but wonder if he could have disappeared off Jones Beach if he had lived fifty years ago.