Too good to be true? The Second Half of Your Life as reviewed on Amazon Last week, a self-help book called The Second Half of Your Life attracted a flurry of glowing, five-star reviews on Amazon. The trouble is, the reviews all appeared within mere days of the book's publication; before anyone could have realistically read it, much less formed an opinion of it. What's more, they had been posted by users with no other customer reviews to their name. All rather suspect. The theory is that the reviews were fake; planted on the site by someone with a vested interest. Does this call into doubt the Amazon reviewing system? Well, as an Amazon faker myself – albeit of a different variety – I'm not overly concerned. First of all, I know from experience that Amazon doesn't give its users untrammelled freedom to write whatever they want. The site has previously disallowed, or subsequently deleted my reviews, even some of my accounts. The decision is usually fairly arbitrary, my alter ego who was obsessed with 1980s actor Fred Savage – mentioning him in reviews of every and any item – survived the cull, while my Jeremy Clarkson-loving, born-again Christian character got the chop. Regardless, it's clear that someone is always watching and moderating.
Thankfully they have a healthy sense of humour, and will let some of the silly stuff slide. Most famously, the hundreds of reviews of a box canvas print of TV presenter Paul Ross, which has become something of a cult internet hit. I suppose the logic is that joke reviews don't really hurt anyone. They are clearly silly and won't contain any information that would make anyone part with their cash, or withhold their cash for that matter. My spoof review of the Bible, for example, is unlikely to stop any potential customers in their tracks, and if it does, well, that's between the buyer and their God.
So what can Amazon do about the more ambiguous reviews? The ones that aren't obvious jokes or don't contain blatant spam or abuse? Well, the answer is: nothing really. Who can prove that someone hasn't read and liked a book? The reality is that the internet as a whole has to be approached with caution, because it provides the ideal tool for self-promotion, and the perfect cover for pretending to be someone else. From my time on the stand-up circuit, for example, I know of comedians who, in addition to rallying all of their friends and acquaintances, have gone one further and set up online aliases to defend themselves against bad reviews, rate their own YouTube videos, and vote for themselves in online competitions. I also know of journalists and Comment is free writers who have usernames set up to answer criticism and to praise their own work in the comments section.
There are probably more people fibbing online than not.
So, with all this in mind, how do you tell spurious comments and reviews from genuine ones? Here are a couple of tips. Firstly, real reviews usually contain a mix of information, good and bad. If someone is evangelically keen on something, be wary. Especially if their review sits among lukewarm and bad comments. Secondly, how is it written? If it's too slick, it's probably a marketing plant; an attempt to manufacture (most likely absent) positive critical acclaim. As I said at the start, though, I'm not overly concerned. If you're shopping online you are, by definition, on the internet and therefore sitting on the biggest goldmine of information in the history of the world. We're in a better position as consumers than we've ever been. There are comparison websites, online magazines with reams of reviews, and Amazon even gives you the chance to read the first few pages of a book before you buy. In the old days, buying a book involved going to the store, reading the critics' comments on the back and flicking through the first chapter. We did OK then, and now we have the added help, if we so wish, of a spread of user comments that we can balance, take into account or discard.
Now excuse me while I log into my other account and write myself a glowing comment underneath this piece.