nathalieThe late Harriet Klausner, author of 31,000 book reviews, claimed to devour several titles a day. Klausner’s enemies said she was harmful to the cause of literary quality. But could too many Amazon reviews also be bad for the reviewers’ mental health—or at least indicate existing problems?

Inside the vicious world of Amazon reviewers is the headline in the Independent newspaper. But that isn’t the end of it, thinks Nathalie Olah (photo).

Wrapping up her commentary with examples of the grave risks, she concludes that “writing reviews is a way of helping out and, to an extent, showing off. There’s an assumption that the internet has opened up conventionally educated pursuits—publishing, broadcasting and yes, reviewing—to all. And it has. But it has not provided the security needed for people to do so with confidence and self-belief. For others, Amazon reviewing has become a worrying marker of self-worth and an unlikely reminder of the tendency for loneliness and low self-esteem in our increasingly digitised world.” Wow. Your response?

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  1. Perhaps I should comment as a “recovering” Amazon reviewer. Years back, I was highly rated enough that Amazon sent me “stuff” to review and keep, some of it costing hundreds of dollars. Although I’ve not done a single Amazon review since about 2008, I’m still highly enough rated on some Amazon reviewer lists, that I regularly get unsolicited offers of products to review. I don’t do that and I quit doing reviews for Amazon itself for two reasons:

    1. I began to ask myself why, if I was concerned about Amazon’s domination of the book market, I was helping their sales. Most of the books I reviewed were books I knew I would like, hence I gave a lot of honest, positive reviews. I was making lots of money for Amazon.

    2. Amazon and I clashed over whether I could mention my books in reviews of books by others, even when the reference was legitimate (i.e my UntanglingTolkien in a review of Tolkien books). Amazon was being muddled and inconsistent in their policies about that at the time hence the clash. I used that as an excuse to quit, although I’ve noticed that for my still-posted reviews Amazon does now allow links to my books to remain.

    The addiction is a simple one. Do Amazon reviews well, and you acquire an influential mind-share of what’s happening in the book world. It’s a bit like becoming a writer for The New York Review of Books without having to move to Manhattan and make connections with the ‘right people.’ You can do it from anywhere without knowing anyone.

    Like anything else, being a top-rated Amazon reviewer is a skill to be learned. Write reviews using certain techniques, and you get highly rated and rewarded psychologically. Get enough positive votes, and you get that free stuff. I like free stuff. I had my email program set up to beep loudly when that monthly email of review offers came in from Amazon about lunch time once a month. The best stuff was typically grabbed within a couple of minutes, leaving only the salad bowls, obscure romance novels, and candy bars for the too-slow reviewers.

    ——

    So Nathalie Olah is getting it quite right when she says, “writing reviews is a way of helping out and, to an extent, showing off. There’s an assumption that the internet has opened up conventionally educated pursuits—publishing, broadcasting and yes, reviewing—to all.” The Internet has made success in publishing easier and hence more ego-gratifying.

    She is also right when she notes: “Amazon reviewing has become a worrying marker of self-worth and an unlikely reminder of the tendency for loneliness and low self-esteem in our increasingly digitised world.”

    Although for that I’d stress her emphasis on “our increasingly digitised world” is about the Internet in general. Have enough of a life outside the Internet and you don’t have issues with self-worth, loneliness, and self-esteem. Being successful as an Amazon reviewer is actually an emotional boost, it’s just that it’s not the same as working in a office for The New York Review of Books and getting the praise of flesh-and-blood colleagues.

    The Internet is too abstract and nebulous to really reward and strengthen us emotionally. That’s perhaps the key reason that all too many present-day college students feel a need for “safe spaces” and “trigger alerts.” Modern technologies such as texting rather than talking face-to-face has reduced their ability to deal with emotional conflicts. Almost all they’ve experienced in the realm of relationships has been sanitized for text messages or Facebook with complex and even negative feelings buried in silly emoticons.

    For an excellent book on that, I highly recommend Sherry Turkle’s _Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age_. She gives an excellent illustration of the change when she discusses her conversations with a sensitive girl and artistic ambitions trying to cope with arguing parents headed for divorce. When the girl kept a private diary, she was open with her feelings and that openness helped her cope. When she began to chronicle her life on Facebook instead, she quit writing about her troubles and created an artificial, all-is-well illusion. Those troubles festered inside her.

    Take someone growing up as a teen in recent years, deprive her of honest diaries or real conversations with close friends. Then substitute these artificial on-line Facebook roles and the narrow emotional roles of texting, and you have someone who’s never got in touch with or learn to manage their own feelings, much less those of friends, much less the contrary views of strangers appearing on their campus to speak. Faced with a real world they find terrifying, they want to flee into safe zones, protected by trigger warnings. And if you’ve developed that sort of stunted personality, even success as an Amazon reviewer will do you no good. The world out there remains a scary place.

    Read Turkle’s _Reclaiming Conversation_. You’ll be glad you did. In the Teleread context, it’s started me wondering if schools and parents should be limiting the technology that students use to speciality devices. For reading, give them a epaper reader that doesn’t do texting or Facebook. For writing, give them a specialized device like the Alphasmart Neo. Indeed, I’d love to seem someone create an new variation of the Neo that’d add to basic writing the chapter management features of the Scrivener app. Together, the two would give students the best of technology without the emotionally restricting downside and distractions of shallow, on-line chatting.

    ——

    I see that downside almost every time I take a walk through a nearby college campus. In the afternoon, students often string hammocks between trees, typically two or three close together. Do they talk with one another as they swing back and forth? Almost never. Each remains glued to a smartphone, tablet or laptop. They may me only a few feet away, but they might has well be miles apart.

    If you want something to ponder, ask yourself why, as Turkle notes, “Silicon Valley parents who work for social media companies send their kids to technology-free schools in the hope this will give their children greater emotional and intellectual range.” And their ranks include Steve Jobs (p. 55), who severely limited his kids exposure to iPads and iPhones. Why, ask yourself, are these people pushing onto the kids of others what they feel is harmful for their own children?

    That gadget-induced deficiencies has a serious long-term impact. When I lived in Seattle, to support my writing I juggled several jobs that had me interacting with the public. I picked up from those I worked for that they preferred those older because so many young adults didn’t know how to managed their relationship with strangers. Turkle gives numerous examples of employer making that complaint.

    If you got kids, you’d do well to be like Steve Jobs and severely limit their access to digital gadgetry and to push them into situations, as volunteers or entry-level workers, where they’re forced to master people skills and emotion reading that they’re not going to learn texting or on Facebook. You’ll be doing them one of the biggest favors you can do as a parent of today’s children.

    –Michael W. Perry, author of My Nights with Leukemia (about interacting with parents and children with leukemia)

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