In Praise of the Three-Star Review

I used to be skeptical of online reviews. Now I’m downright cynical about them.

The best example I’ve seen of their unreliability? A war between fans of Breaking Bad and fans of Game of Thrones.

It began because an episode from Breaking Bad’s final season was the top-rated TV episode of all time on IMDB.com. Hundreds of thousands of user ratings had it sitting at a perfect 10. And maniacal fans of the show wanted to keep it that way, with no competition for the crown.

So whenever another show scored top marks, Breaking Bad fans would start bombing it with one-star reviews. They did it with Succession, Chernobyl, and even the Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul. Each of these shows was blistered with thousands of one-star reviews.

When the Game of Thrones spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, came out of the gate hot, BB’s fans went to work, review-bombing like mad.

Game of Thrones fans retaliated, giving that “perfect 10” episode of Breaking Bad more than 70,000 one-star reviews. That was enough to wipe out the perfect score.

Yes, with all our remarkable advances in technology, this is what humankind has chosen to do with it.

There are already countless stories of restaurants paying their employees a bonus if they’ll recruit friends to lavish their place with bogus five-star praise. Then, the same posse will review-bomb the competition.

It’s all coordinated manipulation, and the practice is rampant in so many industries.

Then you have a different flavor, which is basically just individual pettiness. These are angry, frustrated souls who dole out one-star reviews for anything if they’ve been even slightly inconvenienced. There are no shades between five- and one-star service—it’s all or nothing, and the power that comes from sticking someone with a one-star review is intoxicating.

Then there are the one-stars who come from a different place altogether. I once received a one-star review from someone who tried downloading one of my ebooks from Amazon and had trouble with the retailer’s system. So my book got one star.

They never read it. Their tech issue was with Amazon, not with me. But I’m the one who got punished. When I wrote to Amazon, pointing out the issue, they responded that the review would remain. In other words, “tough shit, Dom.”

Which leaves me asking: why would anyone place a smidge of confidence in any online reviews? They’ve been hijacked for every nefarious purpose imaginable, and yet we’re supposed to make informed buying decisions based on them. It’s insane.

After a while, you learn to just live with the system, warts and all. The radio industry taught me to have thick skin, and my foray into the publishing world made me grateful for those radio battle scars.

Has all this made me ignore reviews entirely? Not quite. Years ago, I found the most reliable reviews are the three-stars. Those are people who are clearly not cheerleaders, hired guns selected to offer up five stars. Nor are they one-star arsonists, the mildly inconvenienced citizens who demand perfection from anyone and anything.

Three-star folks generally give you the good and the bad. I find them much more trustworthy.

So on the rare occasions I do wade in, I go straight to the threes. But honestly? Unless it’s word-of-mouth from a trusted friend, I’ll keep ignoring most online reviews. They’ve become a joke.

Now, quickly, give this post a thumbs-up. 🤣

Dom Testa writes fiction and nonfiction, and he’s received plenty of reviews in his career. He holds a grudge against exactly one of them.

Find his five-star books at DomTestaBooks.com.