A Yelp Review of Yelp

I meant to write this corny article ages ago, but was only reminded of my procrastination recently with the announcement of “Peeple”, the latest retarded, yet unnecessary app in the increasingly overcrowded market of retarded, unnecessary apps.  Peeple is an app that lets you rate other people.  It’s one of those lowest common denominator sites that takes an idea that was already successful and simplifies it, or merely applies that established idea to some other topic.  Kind of like how Twitter is just a half-ass blog site for people who can only write single sentences, or how Vine is Youtube for D+ students.

My original idea was to review individual people who write reviews on Yelp, because Yelp is essentially the Walmart of the internet.  The site tends to attract a few discrete types of people.  You have the trendy hipster types who want to wax poetic about that great bar or that overpriced vegan restaurant down the street.  (“It’s sooo good.  I can’t even…”)  Then you have the entitled narcissists, who jump at the chance to bitch and moan about every instance in which they aren’t catered to hand over foot.  (“Oh my gawd.  I had to wait like 5 minutes.  One star!”)  Rarely do reviews on Yelp fall into the neutral middle ground in the same manner they do on some of the major online retailer’s product reviews.  Most are poorly written however, so at least there’s some sort of consistency going on.

The reviews aren’t written merely to inform, but rather to garner some sort of reaction for the person writing the review, as if they are the main attraction and not the establishment in question.  There is an overwhelming social media slant to Yelp, with the site even having a focus on “friend-collecting” like on facebook or myspace.  How does writing a few reviews about restaurants necessitate the adding of other people on the site as friends?  What purpose does this even serve?  One of the draws of social media is that accomplished feeling you get based on how high of a friends list count you reach.  Do you actually hang out with, or even know any of these other people who write half-assed reviews on Yelp, or is the friends list essentially just a “high score” of sorts that you try to increase for some non-existent reward.

Yelp also has a completely unnecessary rating system for their reviews.  Their reviews have three buttons, one of which is a “useful” button, which is ironically, the only useful one.  It’s the time-tested qualifier for whether or not a review sticks to the topic and relays pertinent information, which many other sites have used for years.  Yelp also adds two completely pointless buttons into the mix as well.  There is a “funny” button and a “cool” button, neither or which convey any sort of practical information to the person using the site.  Reviews that contain no humor whatsoever will have still end up with a count beside the funny button, and people will still click on the cool button even though it serves absolutely no purpose.  These buttons are essentially an evaluation of the person posting, and have nothing to do with what is being reviewed.  Reading some of these pointless reviews, I can’t help but wish there was a “useless” button.  The site in general is a bit of an unrefined shit show.

I’m getting tired of writing about something as uninteresting as Yelp, so let’s wrap this equally uninteresting post up and get to the point.  Here is my Yelp-style Yelp review of Yelp:

 

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MeatGoblet wrote a review for Yelp                                           One minute ago

★★★★★ 11/8/2015

Hay guys! it’s ya boy Meat Goblet here. Man.let me tell you. all my friends where talkin’ about this site called Yelp online and I figured I’d check it out. Hey man. Its pretty good. So its like this social media site like myspace or somethin that you can also rate stuff on. they got a place you can put all you’re freshest pics up so that other people will think you’re hot or whatevr else. Maybe you can meet like a girl friend or boyfreind of whatever else. they also got neat-o buttons n shit that you can push all on to let peepz know that that there writings are funny and cool or whatever else. Then they got personal info stats on the side so that people can get to no you better. they got THings liek “things I love” & “my first concert”. They got other important stuff to like ‘cUrrent crush”.  U know, all the things people need 2 know about you on a review sight.  its pretty good. I definatly like it beter than myspace bacuse you can add all your friends and pictures but U can also make reviews 2 and thats good becuase its another creative outlit and gets U better at writting. So add me as you’re friend on there and dont forget to click the funy and cool buttons cause my review was definatley cool and funny.  Later!

Was this review…?
useful 1  funny 11  cool 9

Silver Linings Playbook Is a Chick Flick.

I try to keep things fairly topical in my writings on this site.  As such, I will be doing a review of the critically acclaimed Hollywood film Silver Linings Playbook from the year 2012.  Next week I’ll be doing a review of the iPhone 3.  Be sure to keep an eye out for that.

I made it a point to finally watch this movie merely because of the rave reviews it was getting and all the press that what’s-her-name who co-stars in the movie was getting.  I knew nothing about the movie other than that it starred Bradley Cooper and what’s-her-name and that it obviously had something to do with football.

After watching it, I realized that this movie is basically a chick flick with a football subplot thrown in to cater to the men.  This movie was written to be the type of chick flick that a woman could drag her boyfriend to under the pretense that it wouldn’t be a chick flick.  The problem is that it is very much indeed a chick flick.  Let me explain with a paragraph containing more than 3 sentences for once in this post.

The basic gist of the movie is that a hunky dreamboat of a guy (Bradley Cooper), with a troubled, violent past, is in the process of getting his life together and becoming a better person.  Chick flick count = 1.  He meets a self-centered, unreasonable, childish, emotionally unstable gal (what’s-her-name), who is single because her boyfriend died as opposed to leaving her, which would have been more realistic.  Chick flick count = 2.  The dude agrees to practice dancing with the girl for a contest she wants to enter, in exchange for her helping him with something largely inconsequential involving his ex-wife.  Chick flick count = 9.  They attend the dance contest and get a high enough score to win some bet that ties the movie up nicely into a happy ending with a bow on top.  Chick flick count  = 37.  The gal storms off emotionally when the guy talks to his ex-wife after the contest instead of making her the center of attention.  Chick flick count = 7,815.  The guy rushes to catch the girl and proclaim his undying love for her before she completely pouts away from the scene.  Chick flick count = 9.18e23.  The End.

Sounds like a chick flick right?  But what about all that football stuff the movie led you to believe would actually play a role in it somehow.  “Playbook” is in the title, and there are football play diagrams on the DVD cover and promotional posters after all.  Well see… here’s the thing.  That was just a ploy to get dudes into the theater to see a chick flick.  The main character and his dad are merely fans of the Eagles, whom the dad bets on throughout the movie.  The main character even attends an Eagles game at one point in the movie as a plot point to reinforce the violent, irresponsible character traits he is supposed to have after he gets into a fight at the event.

The problem here is that the sports angle could have been completely replaced with something else and the movie would have played out the same.  The father and son could have bonded over a love of hunting or watching reruns of Charles in Charge.  It’s just like The Big Lebowski in that regard.  That movie was about a rug and mistaken identity, and had almost nothing to do with bowling, despite largely being marketed as a bowling comedy.  I can write another article about how overrated that movie is some other time, but back to Silver Lining Chick Flick for the time being.

The point is that the plot of this movie can be summed up in 4 or 5 sentences (see paragraph 4), due to the fact that it’s a fairly simple formulaic chick flick.  Matthew McConaughey could have starred in this movie, it could have been written by Jane Austen and it wouldn’t have been any more of a chick flick than it already is.  The inconsequential football side plots do nothing to change this fact.  Silver Linings Playbook is a color-by-numbers chick flick that somehow earned 8 Academy Award nominations, 4 Oscar nods, and 4 Golden Globe nominations.  Seriously.  It didn’t even have terrible British accents and colonial people wardrobe.

So… uh… I guess I’d rate this movie an 8 out of a possible -2.