Who you gonna trust?

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever reviewed? For me, it’s a toss up between an airport toilet, an overpriced cheese-grater and an online reviewing platform (a review within a review, like a grim Groundhog Day).

Reviewing, especially online, is big business, not least because eWOM (electronic word of mouth) travels fast, sealing the fates of businesses in the blink of a star-rating. We trawl them even though they’re hardly an enthralling genre.

With so many reviews on offer, how do we decide whose opinion to trust?

Typically, reviews have at least three components. First, a star rating, usually out of 5 or 10. Second, an evaluation, often expressed by an adjective (‘‘good’’, ‘‘delicious’’, ‘‘terrible’’), maybe an intensifier (‘‘very’’, ‘‘extremely’’, ‘‘awfully’’) and sometimes a fixed phrase (‘‘won’t go back’’, ‘‘definitely recommend’’).

This is the formulaic and predictable part. But even here, there can be surprises as not all adjectives behave the same. ‘‘Good’’ can be both a marker of approval (‘‘this is very good’’) and disapproval (‘‘this is not very good’’), whereas ‘‘delicious’’ does not occur in negative reviews.

Third, there is a strategy for engendering trust from readers. The best way to sell a review turns out to be by striking a shared bond with the audience. We trust people we can relate to and who speak like us. Regardless of knowledge of the product being reviewed, if Janet is also a full-time-working-mum-of-two, then I’m inclined to trust her opinion on cheese graters.

Researcher Camilla Va´ squez has analysed the language of online reviews. She writes in The Discourse of Online Consumer Reviews (Bloomsbury, 2014) that, although some reviewers construct their opinion by providing details of actual expertise, for instance by claiming a relevant occupation (‘‘As a yoga instructor, this yoga mat . . .’’), reviews involve many identity cues that have nothing to do with expertise at all.

Trust is manufactured by providing personal information about the reviewer’s life(style) in order to strike a shared connection with the reader. And this permeates right down to individual word choices, from slang (‘‘meh’’) to usernames (‘‘momof2_1954’’), because speaking in familiar ways increases trust.

However, if the avalanche of required reviewreading in the upcoming holiday season fills you with dread, you will be pleased to learn that some reviewers have gone out of their way to make your reading experience a pleasant one.

One reviewer of Tuscan Milk (a product that has surprisingly received more than 1500 reviews on Amazon alone!) parodies Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43:

How do I drink thee?

Let me count the ways.

I drink thee in the kitchen and living room and every other room

My steps can reach, when feeling deep in gloom

More of a Shakespeare fan? There’s a review written as a play in two acts. There is also an Emily Dickinson parody and, for Milton fans, one in the vein of Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained.

Of course, these reviews are not trying to provide a complete and accurate evaluation of the product at hand; they aim to amuse and entertain.

In a world obsessed with the ‘‘perfect’’ product or experience, we are bombarded to assess everything, down to the most mundane things. It is no wonder comic relief is needed, even in a genre not usually associated with gripping reading.