Reviewing The Reviews: The Good, The Bad, And The Hilarious

I'm not what you'd call a shopaholic, though I have been known to browse the online storefronts from time to time.  In the past six months, I've made a handful of purchases from Amazon.com, and within days of placing my order, I receive an Amazonian email asking me to log in and write a review of my purchase.  Amazon doesn't always have the lowest prices or the best deals, but I'll give them this: the tomes of customer reviews on all kinds of products make a very handy shopping guide.

Take, for example, the purchase of my first iPhone accessory a few months ago--a car charger.  I wanted something small, durable, reasonably priced, and a charger that was made out of high quality materials that would stand the test of time.   It's tough to make an educated purchase when you're shopping online...how can you tell if an item is well-made and durable by looking at stock photos on the computer screen?  That's where customers' product reviews come in very handy.  My search for the perfect car charger, however, did more than just educate me on product options and features--it reinforced my previous impression that not all reviews are created equal.

Amazon may be top dog in sheer volume of reviews, but mixed in with nuggets of practical and useful information are an incredible number of useless if not grammatically-challenged customer reviews.  As I scanned different brands and models and their corresponding reviews, I unearthed "valuable" tidbits like these:

• Item works exactly as described and super fast shipping was a plus!
• This is a very nice charger. It looks good and the light is nice too.
• Works beautifully and is beautiful to look at.

I get the impression that these buyers pulled the charger out of the mailbox on the day it arrived, plugged their phone in for five seconds, then sprinted to their computers to share their insights with future Amazon shoppers.  Reviews like these tell me absolutely nothing except that the charger that showed up in the mail did, in fact, resemble the picture on the package and that the charger worked properly for one--or at least part of one--use.  I also know that there is an Amazon seller somewhere out there who provides "super fast shipping."  Bam, enlightened!  Information like that does nothing but clutter the site and slow down the process of locating helpful reviews.

On the flip side, some reviewers channeled their inner Roger Ebert and took the time to submit detailed, multi-paragraph reviews, covering every aspect of their experience with the product--what they liked, what they didn't like, and their overall satisfaction with the purchase.  Instead of rushing from the mailbox to submit a product review, the more intelligent customers had the sense to wait six months or more before writing the review so they could offer some meaningful insight on product quality.  Some reviewers took a follow-up approach and wrote an initial review, then came back after six months and provided an update on the charger's longevity.

Despite having to sift through troves of useless customer reviews, it didn't take me too long to select my winner: the Griffin GC23139 PowerJolt Dual.  In this case, Amazon also had the lowest price, and I made the purchase.

No sooner had I navigated my way through the One-Click Checkout than I received Amazon's standard email asking me to rate the product.  Aspiring to provide a truly useful review, I'm going to withhold my final judgment until at least July.  I think it was Tom Petty who said, "the waiting is the hardest part," but it's also true that good things come to those who wait.

So now what?  The story has a happy ending, right? I needed a charger, I found one, and I bought it.  And along the way we've all learned a valuable lesson about what it takes to write a useful product review.  I've praised the good ones; I've complained about the bad ones.  End of story?

Not so fast...I've also learned that, as the title to this post suggests, there's a third class of product reviews that are inherently valuable to everyone, even if the reader has absolutely no intention of making a purchase.  These reviews are worthwhile simply for their entertainment value.

There are a lot of truly useless products on the market.  It's no secret that millions of shoppers visit Amazon as much to read customer reviews as they do to make their final purchases.  A very wise group of writers took note of these two simple facts and came up with the brilliant idea to write hilarious, sarcastic product reviews. We'll jump right into an example: below we have the Mountain Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve T-Shirt, the epitome of "useless product."

 

This shirt is currently available for as little as $11.33 on Amazon.com.  Amazon user B. Govern expertly typed up a customer review for this priceless article of clothing.  So entertaining was the review, in fact, that more than 28,000 users have rated the review as "helpful."  Here's the verbatim:

This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that's when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-Mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to 'howl at the moon' from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called meth. I told them no, because they didn't have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn't settle for the first thing that comes to him.

I arrived at Wal-Mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her Mountain Dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women

Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the 'guns'), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

See how this works?  B. Govern managed to insult Wal-Mart shoppers, fat people, and trailer dwellers in three short paragraphs.  Other users took a more visual approach, uploading their own photos of the wolf shift.  There are too many classics to post, but here are two of them:

The wolf shirt managed to turn back the clock for John Travolta, and it seems to be the source of all things awesome about Chuck Norris.

Here's a second prime example of entertaining customer reviews on Amazon.  Having spent many years at The Gym, this is a product I'm extremely familiar with: American Flag pants.  There's a strong positive correlation between the quality of your gym and the number of washed-up 1980s bodybuilders roaming the facility who look like they should have a flagpole protruding from their @sses:

Here's a brief sample of the many hilarious customer reviews that accompany these patriotic leg-sleeves:

• It was such a relief finding this amazing garment. This pant allows me a truly unlimited range of lower body motion while staying smartly attached to my ankles with an elasticity previously known only to my underwear. Patriotism and Freedom of Movement. Does it get any better than this?
• I originally bought workout pants made out of France's flag, but whenever my workout partner Hans would come over, for some reason they would turn completely white, a breeze would come out of nowhere, and they'd start flapping/waving in his direction. Weird.
• AMERICA IS MY SPOTTER!

Now, let's face it: Amazon sells a lot of practical, serious merchandise in addition to random crap, so it's not always the ideal place to go for the time-crunched, sarcastic product reviewers who doesn't want to waste precious hours tracking down the useless products. If you're looking for an online marketplace that sells nothing but worthless, overpriced junk that's begging to be publicly mocked, Skymall is the epitome of perfection.

Skymall is so bad that it can only convince potential customers to browse its product offerings when they're held captive in their airplane seats with nothing else to read but the sad selection in their seat-back pockets.  I truly wonder if Skymall has made a single sale to a person who wasn't brain-dead from the boredom of a lengthy cross-country flight...

An old article on humor website Cracked.com demonstrates exactly how Skymall lobs softballs that are waiting for someone to hit out of the park.  In an article titled The 7 Most Useless Skymall Products (Reviewed Accordingly), author Soren Bowie, a regular contributor on Cracked, shares a variety of his sarcastic product reviews that he's posted on Skymall's website.  Among other Skymall offerings, he takes hilarious shots at an oversize novelty lawnchair, a dog-deterring birdhouse, and a hidden camera alarm clock.  Perhaps funniest of all, one of his reviews offered me my first exposure to the ridiculous Gravity Defyer sperm logo shoes.

His strategy is absolutely brilliant. A quick look at Bowie's articles on Cracked reveals that his posts regularly attract hundreds of thousands if not millions of viewers.  And much like this blog, he seems to post something about once a month...but unlike this blog, Bowie is getting paid directly for his writing efforts.

I started to wonder how he managed to build up such an impressive following, but the answer is clear: when you're writing hilarious product reviews--whether it's on Amazon, Skymall, or elsewhere--you've got a built-in following right off the bat.  I can only assume that readership on his Cracked posts skyrocketed as more shoppers admired the work of a mysterious product reviewer named "SorenB"...

When I look at these impressive results, I realize that I might be better off giving up this whole blogging thing and devoting my writing efforts to insulting and sarcastic product reviews--with all the online shoppers out there, I could instantly expose my writing to millions of readers across the world.  Once they get a taste of what I have to offer, I could branch out into actual published writing--perhaps a debut on Cracked.com?  From there, it's only a matter of time before I take over the world of online humor.  Time to go shopping...