Throwing Stars: Weaponized 1-Star Reviews

Reviews are like a form of social media. Reviews are your voice. And like any other platform you post on, what you say will be filtered by how you’re feeling at any given moment. This is nothing I haven’t said before, but it bears repeating.

We bring our own personal selves into the reviews we write, and that can mean bringing in bias. And it can mean bringing in wrath. Our history, our emotions, our points of view, can all be laid bare, sometimes coloring our reviews in deeper hues, sometimes washing them out altogether.

We’re people, so no one way is ever always right. A one star review because that waitress made a joke about anyone named Jessica? Probably not the most helpful for others looking to try the restaurant, but it was your experience and you can choose how to share it.

All of this is in light of recent Robinhood events, which, if you hadn’t heard, was kind of a big deal. Short version for those who vaguely know/mostly don’t care: Robinhood, an app that many casual investors use to play the markets, restricted trading on Gamestop’s stock, which the people all wanted to buy because money. They were upset that they couldn’t buy it. Very upset. Again, because money. Good enough?

So what does a consumer do when the service they are provided is sub-par and they don’t have a manager to harangue? They post about it, whether on Reddit, or Facebook, or Twitter, or in this case, app store reviews.

Robinhood was flooded with one star reviews due to the mass of angry users. The question is, how legitimate are these reviews?

In this case, I’d say pretty legitimate. It wasn’t that the app was buggy or difficult to use. It wasn’t that it had accessibility issues preventing impaired users from utilizing the app to the same extent as anyone else. It was that the company itself restricted its own consumer-base from executing purchases freely and openly.

So the anger was justified. Hundreds of thousands of one star reviews, all justified.

But Google still wiped a large number of them out.

And you know what? I think that was justified as well.

Robinhood, while they’re still on blast from a LOT of people, they got the point. They didn’t miss that all these reviews had been written. They heard loud and clear that people weren’t happy (and relaxed their restrictions slightly).

Why do I think the removal was justified? Well, who are the one star reviews helping? Chances are, most people looking to download Robinhood at this point will have heard about all this stuff. And chances are, there won’t be another occasion where Robinhood is caught between what it must have considered two bad decisions. They’ll clean up on their end, Google is cleaning up on that end. What’s left are reviews that reflect how the app works, and how people like or don’t like it.

It’s good to recognize, point out, highlight the wrongs. But once that’s been done, it’s not serving anyone to keep the emotional, enraged, and livid reviews out there, the reviews that were left through a jaded lens.

Point in case, let me bring up a couple of reviews for THE (ugh) Ohio State University:

Well that first one starts off innocent enough, but by the time you get to SCREW THE BUCKEYES, you get the picture. This has been left by a Michigan fan, storied rivals to OSU. And Lil Stiga’s Detroit Lions profile pic gives them away before we even get to the review; this is a Michigander, they’re gonna hate Ohio.

So are these reviews helping anyone who might want to attend or visit OSU? Before you answer that, let’s take a closer look at our two friendly reviewers here.

Are these any more useful than the previous two reviews? If you hate OSU, it sucks, so you’ll hate it. If you love Michigan, you already know, Michigan is the best.

I’ll tell you the purpose. It’s what people do. These are fans being fanatics. This is how they support their team. And when it’s not a team you’re fighting for, it’s your family, or your own self.

So I guess the review does help someone, even if it’s just you. Write the way you want, with the words you want, and dole out the stars you want. Sometimes you need to whip those one stars, and sometimes you gotta give those high fives.

Just remember that everybody can see this stuff. THEY KNOW WHERE TO FIND YOU, STIGA!