Stop Listening to People Who Only Exist When You’re Online

Before picking up a book- or more likely listening to an audiobook- you may check the reviews of said book to see if other people thought it was worthwhile or not. You may open up your phone and go to whatever search engine and type, “Spoiler free review of , then you may indulge yourself in whatever critics have to do and watch as they either praise the book, insult it or say it was the embodiment of mediocrity. After you may either decide that, “Hey, this book sucks. I’m gonna do something else.”, or, “Wowza! This book is fantastical. I’m gonna read it!”. Now some people will choose to read the book even if it gets a bad review as they wish to, “Have their own perspective and opinions on the story.”, but is it really your perspective? Or is it your perspective after being tainted by online personas who wouldn’t dare say half of the things they say on the internet in real life? Or is it your perspective after expecting to experience the, “exact same thing” dozens of people online said they had experienced? Is it even your perspective at all? Now let’s switch gears and think about how all those online personalities rated the novel. Most stick to the basic structure of rating something one to ten out of 10, others may do the same but only up to five, and others may just give it a zero. Or even more rarely let’s say they rate based on the amount of chapters. Oh, the story had twenty-three chapters? Well then there's a high chance that someone rated it, “eleven out of twenty-three”, justifying by saying that they only found eleven of the chapters enjoyable and the other twelve to be quite the contrary. Sure people usually use this system to rate albums (if an album has thirty songs then someone will probably rate it something such as, “sixteen out of thirty”, or something along those lines), but what’s stopping critics from using that same system with books? What’s stopping critics at all? People online enable critics by agreeing, disagreeing, debating or just interacting with these people in general. These people who love to insult, bash and make fun of other people for no good reason but if they were to meet the people they insult online in real life, they wouldn’t say a thing to them. Because the internet is just that, the internet, a place with millions of people who solely live online saying horrible things about other people to make themselves feel bigger. To make themselves feel more powerful but in real life they have no influence so they won’t dare say the terrible things that they love to say with the security of the internet- and the internet isn’t even that secure but that’s a topic for another day. Basically what I’m trying to say is that before you check online reviews about something you want to read, watch, play, buy or listen to, remember that these people on the internet are just that; people on the internet.