You should only read reviews after you have experienced the thing
Summary
A straphanger argues that reviews should only be read after you've experienced something yourself. Her reasoning? Pre-reading other people's takes taints your experience and makes everyone respond the same way. Kareem pushes back hard, defending his right to check reviews before dropping money on a bad movie. The rider doubles down: she doesn't even watch trailers and wishes her friends would stop telling her about things she's about to see. She wants reviews to function like support groups where people connect after experiencing something, not before. "I don't know who I am afterwards," she says about consuming reviews beforehand. It's a surprisingly earnest plea for protecting authentic first impressions in an age where everything gets pre-filtered through someone else's opinion. Kareem concedes maybe art deserves this treatment. Maybe.
Full Transcript
So what's your take? You should only read reviews after you have experienced the thing. 100% disagree. But the way that you're going through life is because of Karen's Yelp reviews. What if I want to go check out a film?
Uh-huh. And the reviews are poor.
Yeah. And I'm like, "I'm going to watch it at home."
So it's capitalism telling you where to put your money and attention, and then the cream rises to the top. And what I think is that because of that, everyone who's making something is making something that is going to get a good review because that's the only way their thing will be seen. But if we start telling people you're only allowed to read this review after you have had your own experience— It. Yeah. Like, watch a trailer, watch an interview, uh, look at pictures of the restaurant, read the back of the book. But I don't think that you should be reading about someone's experience with the thing that you're about to experience because it forms your experience in a way that we're all going to be the same person.
Last time a review made you decide not to do something? When's the last time a review tainted my experience? Every single time.
True. And I think it's led to you look at the comments to decide how you feel about something, and that's terrible. Some things like art—maybe I can agree with, like maybe don't read the— And some people don't even watch the trailer. I actually don't watch the trailer.
What about the word of mouth reviews? I wish that there was less of it. Like, I wish my friends would tell me less about their experiences of things that they know that I'm about to experience because it just—I, I don't know who I am afterwards.
My boy wants to go monk mode. I think reviews should be like support groups. Like, you experience something, and then, "Oh, that movie was so bad. I want to commiserate."
Oh, I want to connect with others who also thought it was bad.
Yes.
Yes. Or learn about other people who actually loved it because, you know, you felt, and then maybe you weren't thinking about it in this critical way, and then you go and say like, "Here's what I thought about this thing. What did you think about this thing?"
You go to the support group.
Yeah.