Why online wine reviews don’t get more respect
You’ve probably heard that Ashley Judd, a celebrity I don’t know much about but I like her anyway, is suing people who have been sending her horrendous tweets.
The brouhaha all started when Ashley, apparently, tweeted something derogatory about a basketball team, Arkansas, that was playing against her beloved Kentucky.
Imagine that! A sports fan talking smack about a rival sports team!
Well, that opened the floodgates. Ashley was inundated with some pretty awful stuff, most of which is unprintable on a family blog like steveheimoff.com : )
This raises the whole question of the abuse of social media. People do say the most terrible things—often, I think, while in a state of C.U.I. (commenting under the influence). It can be demoralizing to be on the receiving end of crap: I know, because I’ve been there.
Let’s talk about wine reviewing. A wine critic needs to have the trust of the people who read him or her. Without that trust, he has no credibility—and without credibility, who cares what he has to say? If you look over the history of where and how wine critics have published their opinions, you’ll find that they’ve been in extremely credible publications. Today’s top wine magazines are trustworthy; whether you agree with their reviews or not, whether you like the 100-point system or loathe it, the fact remains that such pubs as Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Advocate, Wine & Spirits, Food & Wine, etc., are widely perceived to be, like Caesar’s wife, “above suspicion.”
The way for any publication to be above suspicion is to conduct itself respectfully. Professional pubs have internal codes of ethics that prohibit their writers from writing inappropriate things. And not just their writers: they also do not allow foul letters to the editor or slanderous, insulting comments on their websites. Professional publications, in other words, police themselves, in order to keep the conversation civil.
Social media, on the other hand, is pretty much the opposite. Anything goes; all is permitted; eliminating even vile comments is seen as onerous censorship. It was the very freedom of social media that attracted so many of us to it in the first place.
In the last couple of years, we have begun to see the dark side of this openness. When anyone can say anything they want to—no matter how odious or untrue—it is bound to detract from the credibility of the platform as a whole. In fact, that platform can even be viewed as having encouraged odious comments, for the simple reasons that (a) it enabled them, (b) it didn’t explicitly prohibit them, and (c) it didn’t remove them at once. This is the background to the Ashley Judd situation.
And this is why platforms like Twitter, Facebook and pretty much all the rest of them suffer from a credibility gap: If the worst people can use them to spout their stupidity and hatred, this necessarily impacts everybody who chooses to write something on that platform. It’s trickle-down sleaze, and like it or not, it tarnishes everyone.
Am I saying that online wine reviews aren’t accurate and informed? Not at all. I’m not talking about the content of online reviews; I’m talking about the platforms themselves. In the case of any individual online reviewer, you might have accuracy and integrity, but the fact that it appears on a platform that allows untrammeled inaccuracy and untruthfulness to flourish must necessarily make it suspect, or at least keep it from being as credible as it otherwise could be.
What’s the answer? I think we’re seeing something more professional begin to emerge online, with lawsuits like Ashley’s, and with social media platforms in general understanding that they have to do a better job policing themselves. But the problem of stupid, insulting tweeters cannot be solved from above; it has to come from the street. People need to understand that just because they can say something awful online doesn’t mean they should. When the more decent elements stand together to condemn our basest instincts from shouting, social media will advance. Until social media cleans up its act, though, it will continue to have about it the taint of unreliability and unprofessionalism, affecting even the best-intentioned of writers.
Are today’s top wine publications all that trustworthy?
Scandal has swirled around more than one key person at the WA, and even if you buy the Daleyesque argument that the Emperor was completely in the dark as to what his underlings were doing, it still calls into credibility his judgement in selecting people and his level of oversight in managing them.
As for the WS, I don’t know if the consistent stories that swirl around the industry are true or not. I do know that the magazine is nothing more than a celebrity navel-gazing, lifestyle magazine, and that alone calls its credibility seriously into question.
Have you heard of yik yak?
Things getting worse.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/03/09/technology/popular-yik-yak-app-confers-anonymity-and-delivers-abuse.html?referrer=
“The way for any publication to be above suspicion is to conduct itself respectfully.”
I was with you this far. Though it seems like you were stretching to find a connection between the Ashley Judd story and wine criticism, and settled on the rather banal point that one’s reputation is based on one’s behavior.
But then you start to slip:
“Professional pubs have internal codes of ethics that prohibit their writers from writing inappropriate things. And not just their writers: they also do not allow foul letters to the editor or slanderous, insulting comments on their websites. Professional publications, in other words, police themselves, in order to keep the conversation civil.”
Well, codes of ethics are good, and no one’s in favor of slander, which implies untruthfulness. But you go beyond this and fall right into the civility fallacy. “Foul” language and “insults” do not make an argument less true, nor is politesse an assurance of truth or honesty. There was more truth in George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” routine than in the entire history of Fox News, despite the fact that the former is riddled with “foul” language and the latter prohibits it.
And then you fall right off the deep end with this:
“And this is why platforms like Twitter, Facebook and pretty much all the rest of them suffer from a credibility gap: If the worst people can use them to spout their stupidity and hatred, this necessarily impacts everybody who chooses to write something on that platform. It’s trickle-down sleaze, and like it or not, it tarnishes everyone.”
The “worst people” have always been able to abuse a medium. That’s why they’re the worst people. Did the existence of the National Enquirer tarnish the reputation of everyone with a printing press? Well, perhaps in the minds of those who were foolish enough to have believed that being able to afford a press granted someone credibility.
Anyone who trusts glossy wine magazines because, gosh, they’re glossy wine magazines and not some grubby social media account that hoi polloi can put up is a fool and deserves to be misled. One might trust a particular glossy wine mag if one believes it has a track record of being truthful, accurate, and maintaining a wall of separation between editorial and advertising — and, as Bill Haydon suggests, such a beast may or may not exist — but by the same reasoning, one might trust a particular Twitter account because its author has established his or her credibility over time as well.
Substitute “blog” for “social media,” and your post sounds like the kind of thing that could have been written in 2005, not 2015.
Dear Jim B, thank you for your long and engaging comment. As I wrote, I’m not questioning the content of individual wine reviewers, who “might have accuracy and integrity.” I am saying that consumers might well be suspicious of anything online due to the reputation that online reviewing (including Yelp) has achieved. Having said that, I realize that standards of publishing have changed, and possibly been lowered. That’s good for democracy; not so good for excellence in reporting.
Steve,
I’m all in favor of being suspicious of online reviews. I think Yelp is a cesspool and I ignore it except when in need of a laugh. But the problems that infect Yelp aren’t inherent to the medium of online commentary, as you acknowledge. Conversely, there are areas of concern with Big Name Reviewers, too, which I’m sure you realize.
You make an interesting point, but it is worth considering that the wine reviews that do have some clout come not from individual reviewers online, but the aggregate of many individual consumer reviews.
From the trenches of wine retail, I am noticing a dramatic rise in the number of consumers using apps like Delectable, Vivino, and CellarTracker to make buying decisions at the point of sale. Customers feel that retailers will only post positive reviews on shelf talkers, but the information in these apps can’t be controlled by anyone trying to sell them wine.
I recently spoke to a customer who had stopped buying a wine she liked because the Vivino reviews were too low and she felt she shouldn’t like it. That used to happen with pro reviews in the ‘old days.’
As more of our lives rest in our phones, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the influence of these apps increase dramatically.
Wine brands have learned how to gain positive reviews from Spectator or Parker, but very few are thinking about leveraging peer reviews. I believe they should be.
Austin writes:
“I recently spoke to a customer who had stopped buying a wine she liked because the Vivino reviews were too low and she felt she shouldn’t like it. That used to happen with pro reviews in the ‘old days.’”
A timeless chuckle over such “cognitive dissonance”:
http://www.winecommonsewer.com/.a/6a00d8341cbb0453ef017d418bc2aa970c-pi
Now less a chuckle and more a eyes-rolling groan.
From the Los Angeles Times “Op-Ed” Section
(February 10, 2012, Page A19):
“Syntax? Logic? Why?”
Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-02-10/on-web-no-one-cares-if-you-write-like-a-dog-commentary-by-michael-kinsley.html
By Michael Kinsley
Bloomberg View Columnist
It’s been going on for too long, right before our eyes. Inevitably, someone was going to blow the whistle, and wouldn’t you know it would be Felix Salmon, the famous financial blogger for Reuters?
. . .
Nothing, though, prepared me for the dazzling brilliance of Felix’s blog item this week [February 2012] about the quality of writing on the Internet. . . . But his basic point is that on the Web, sheer quantity trumps quality. . . .
. . .
[Too many blogs are devoid of] . . . all aspects of good writing — accuracy, logic, spelling, graceful turns of phrase, wisdom and insight, puns (only good ones), punctuation, proper grammar and syntax (and what’s the difference between those two again?) . . .
. . .
. . . Now one of our nation’s leading bloggers has confessed what we all suspected: that bad writing is inherent to the online world. . . .
Excerpts from The Wall Street Journal “Op-Ed” Section
(April 21, 2006, Page A1f4):
“When Blogs Rule, We Will All Talk Like —-”
Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114558585173032092-email.html
By Daniel Henninger
“Wonder Land” Columnist
. . . it looks to me as if the world of blogs may be filling up with people who for the previous 200 millennia of human existence kept their weird thoughts more or less to themselves. Now, they don’t have to. They’ve got the Web. Now they can share.
. . . a new vocabulary has emerged from clinical psychology to describe generalized patterns of behavior on the virtual continent. As described by psychologist John Suler, there’s dissociative anonymity (You don’t know me); solipsistic introjection (It’s all in my head); and dissociative imagination (It’s just a game). This is all known as digital identity, and it sounds perfectly plausible to me.
. . . there is one more personality trait common to the blogosphere that, like crabgrass, may be spreading to touch and cover everything. It’s called DISINHIBITION. Briefly, disinhibition is what the world would look like if everyone behaved like Jerry Lewis or Paris Hilton or we all lived in South Park.
. . .
In our time, it has generally been thought bad and unhealthy to “repress” inhibitions. Spend a few days inside the new world of personal blogs, however, and one might want to revisit the repression issue.
The human species has spent several hundred thousand years sorting through which emotions and marginal neuroses to keep under control and which to release. Now, with a keyboard, people overnight are “free” to unburden and unhinge themselves continuously and exponentially. . . .
. . .
Intense language like this used to be confined to construction sites and corner bars. Now it is normal discourse on Web sites, the most popular forums for political discussion. Much of this is new. Politics is a social endeavor. The Web is nothing if not “social.” But the blogosphere is also the product not of people meeting, but VENTING alone at a keyboard with all the uninhibited, bat-out-of-hell hyperbole of thinking, suggestion and expression that this new technology seems to release.
At the risk of enabling, does the Internet mean that all the rest of us are being made unwitting participants in the personal and political life of, um, crazy people? As populist psychiatry, maybe this is a good thing; the Web allows large numbers of people to contribute to others’ therapy. It takes a village.
But researchers note that the isolation of Web life results in many missed social cues. It is similar to the experience of riding an indoor roller coaster, what is known in that industry as a “dark ride.” This dark ride could be a very long one.
AFrom The Wall Street Journal “Marketplace” Section
(November 13, 2007, Page B7):
“VENTING Anger on the Web Is All the Rage – Literally”
Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119492127546490849.html
Edited by Ben Worthen
“Best of the Business Tech Blog”
We received this email the other day in response to a post about Google Inc.’s mobile-phone operating system: “You are a moron…Hopefully you have not (and will not) procreate. It would be a shame to have your genes pollute the gene pool. PS: you’re a [expletive deleted].”
We’ve never met, talked with or written to the sender. And while it may seem a tad over the top, it’s an example of something you and your business need to prepare for: Web rage.
Web rage is what happens when you combine unfamiliarity with the ability to easily communicate with someone. “That combination is relatively new,” says Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor at New York University. “It leads to a pretty unfettered expression of the id.”
It used to be difficult to reach the people who make us angry — a journalist who wrote something we disagreed with, a businessperson who made a decision we thought was wrong. But because of email and the Internet, it’s possible to get in touch with these people in a matter of minutes and in a way that doesn’t require human-to-human interaction. That encourages vitriol, Mr. Shirky says, largely because it frees people from the societal bonds that keep us civil.
Mr. Shirky has good news for the businesses that have been on the receiving end of Web rage, either in emails or Web sites. “Don’t sweat it,” he says. “Almost all of those kind of vitriolic I’m-going-to-take-my-business-elsewhere messages are meaningless.” Companies should be much more worried about moderate discontent from a large number of customers than extreme discontent from a small number of customers.
The bigger risk is that one of your company’s employees will commit Web rage, especially as companies empower workers to solve problems on their own. The easy answer, says Mr. Shirky, is just to not send angry emails. But it’s obviously more complicated than that. He suggests companies make dealing with and resisting Web rage a part of employee-training programs.
As for all those who have sent Web rage emails to the Business Technology Blog: We say, bring it on … morons!
Excerpt from Fortune “Techland” Section
(November 12, 2007, Page 46):
“O M G !!! The End of Online Stupidity?;
A software team is building a filter that blocks unintelligible comments”
Link: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/11/12/100954554/
By Josh Quittner
Internet veterans have long complained about the steady erosion of civility — and worse, intelligence — in online discourse. Initially the phenomenon seemed to be a seasonal disorder. It occurred every September when freshmen showed up for college and went online. Tasting for the first time the freedom and power of the Internet, the newbies would behave like a bunch of drunken fraternity pledges, filling electronic bulletin boards with puerile remarks until the upperclassmen could whip them into shape.
. . .
It’s a serious problem. Fools and bandwidth hogs have a way of driving traffic away from the most successful online destinations, a phenomenon that could ruin the emerging social networks and user-generated aggregators like Digg.
But there’s still hope for intelligent life on the Internet. A team of software developers is hard at work on a “STUPID FILTER” that promises to do to idiotic online comments what a spam filter does to junk and unwanted e-mail: put it in a place where it can’t hurt anyone anymore.
. . .
If on line reviews don’t get as much respect as ones published in magazines or newsletters, what about entities that have both a hard copy version and an on-line version, but don’t share the criteria that leads them to choose to show a review in one format but not the other? For example, I am told the WA, which charges $75/year for the hardcopy, requires an additional $99/year for the on-line version. When our 2010 got 94 points in the WA (thank you Galloni!) this review was only shown on line. Wines with lower scores got published in the hard copy edition. What’s the backstory here? I would rather have the review shown in the format that “gets more respect.”