I talked about Show your work by Austin Kleon a short while ago. There is a list of quotes from the book that have become fixtures in my life. One of which is singularly the most useful thing anybody has ever said about online comments.
There is never a space under a painting in a gallery where someone writes their opinion.
When you get to the end of a book you dont have to see what everyone else thought of it.
Austin Kleon
And that resonated with me because I hate comments, I hate the mindless or vindictive dreck they are filled with. I never review anything if I can help it. Not products, not shopping experiences, not delivery drivers. Reviews in my opinion, are in no way a guarantee of what you will get or whether you will like it. It is just a way to make you take your human experience of a product and turn it into a soulless number.
The mantra that you have to engage with your audience – it makes my skin crawl. The idea of having to give my time and attention to any prick on the internet with a bad faith remark to make. Just no. (I should note that Kleon does encourage engaging with your audience and does give a good argument for doing so, but offers other ways of doing it).
Further, I was reading an article which had this to say about the origins of amazon product reviews:
In Amazon’s first annual report, published in 1997, the customer-review section was defined as a feature that would encourage users “to return frequently to the site” and “promote loyalty and repeat purchases.”
I take this as proof of what I have long believed. Online interactions like reviews and comments were created by tech-giants to keep us on their platforms and as a means of turning our behaviour into numerical values for algorithms.
So the great mantra that you must have comments to get traction online may be true, or maybe it is a narrative put out by companies who are trying to turn people into numbers on a spreadsheet.
In conclusion I have been given a cast iron reason to never have comments (on this website or social media) and I intend to stick with it.
These pieces reflect my personal engagement with books and writing – reading closely, thinking through ideas, and responding as a reader rather than as a critic.
