Too Much Information

They are putting a new roof on the building I live in right now and as we live on the top floor all the noise rests on our heads these days. It's making me peevish and when I feel that way I feel the need to let some of it out. My targets today are a couple of parts of the internet that drive me crazy. I love the internet, use it daily for all sorts of things, don't want to abolish it and go back to the old days but it really needs to trim the fat.

What an amazing thing it is when booking a trip to be able to look at restaurants and hotels, compare their pictures and amenities and check out the maps to find out where everything is in relationship to everything else. Truly one of the joys of the internet for me. To fine tune my bookings recently I went to the review sites and that's where the trouble started. For every positive review "Best meal of my life, so perfect!" there is an equally negative one "Don't waste your time and money, the worst!"  Then there are the long, rambling detailed reviews mentioning everybody and everything in glowing terms, most likely written by the owner's mother or next door neighbour. Those have to be ignored. After spending what feels like hours going down the rabbit holes of Tripadvisor and Yelp I finally make a judgement call based on what real truths I felt I could glean from the reviews. Yes, everyone agreed the place was noisy, decor was nice and the menu/room was small. Got it. The rest was crap.

People with an axe to grind take to the Internet, in droves. Those that were satisfied or even happy with their stay or meal or experience don't necessarily write a thing.  They might tell their friends on facebook about it while posting a picture and that's about it. Reviews of anything tend to be weighted to the very displeased  or even worse, those that just want to see their words in print on the web. Make of that what you will.

To confuse things further there is a lot of pressure from places you stay at and events you participate in to review your experience, with a not so subtle pressure in some cases to give the full five star rating. I gave a four star rating to a tour I had gone on in Italy and promptly got emailed by the owner of the company to ask why it wasn't five stars and would I please amend it as it helped them get more business if they had all five star reviews. Makes a woman want to walk away from the keyboard. After every hotel stay or restaurant booking had been fulfilled on my recent trip I received an email, "How was your experience with us? Please review it for us. People are waiting to hear what you thought!" Are they really? Aren't the other fifty or a hundred reviews enough? You need mine? I rarely review a thing unless I feel that there is something the booking public needs to know that is not mentioned on a hotel or restaurant website. On our recent trip we stayed in a brand new hotel that didn't have air conditioning as it was "green" and in an area with a cooler climate. A heat wave occurred during our stay and all the management could do was offer us a small fan to help with the discomfort.  I felt that the "greenness" of the hotel should have been highlighted on the website as it gave the hotel some definite quirks, including no air conditioning, parking, bell hops, room phones and room service. Some people might love that idea and book there because of it but those that love their a/c and having their coffee delivered in the morning should know and go elsewhere so I took to the 'net to say that.

Five years ago I felt that review sites had something to offer me, some honest evaluations of people's experiences but now, just like how Photoshop has made every picture suspect, the spectre of using fake reviews to boost your business or denigrate someone else's seems to hang over every site. I never know whether I am getting the truth or not and it makes me suspect everything. Other than my occasional posts as stated above I will try to stay away from the reviews altogether, despite the bribes being offered by restaurants for the chance to win a free meal for my five star review. I have my dignity, I won't be bought!

Then there is facebook, or as someone suggested it be called Envybook. We all do it, don't we?  We post only the carefully curated pictures of wonderful snippets of our lives, not the real truth of the everyday. These are designed precisely to make our " facebook friends" envious of what wonderful things we do and what a fantastic family, set of friends or pet we have. And it works.  If you want to feel bad about your life go on facebook for a while, see how the rest of the world is living it up.  A friend of mine was having a case of the "everyone has more fun than me" blues after perusing too much facebook material and I told her to start posting stuff herself. Anyone's life can look awesome and exciting when viewed through a narrow lens. Just cherry pick the pictures and add exciting fun captions! "Best kids ever! Love my city! Best hubby in the world! "  The truth need not enter in to it. Your child may have just told you that they hate and asked you for money, but find a pic of the two of you smiling and post away. "Great to share stuff with my fav pal!"  The "likes" will start pouring in and you'll feel better right away.  No recent pictures of fun stuff? No problem, post "memories"! It works just as well to make you feel better about your life and someone else bad about theirs. Ditto for Instagram. You get my gist.

I have a facebook account and use it to promote my blog. I don't post much other stuff and don't follow many people. I have had to unfollow several people as the postings were too much  for me to scan through continuously. Several friends of mine don't have a facebook account and they seem to get through their lives just fine. They keep their life to themselves and if they want to know what someone else is doing in theirs, they call them. Novel thought.

The internet is changing the world, improving lives, connecting people and allowing us to share information in ways that benefit all of us.  The pluses outweigh the minuses, no argument, but please, people...curb yourselves. When I think of all those reposted videos with cute cats or sassy, lecturing three year olds filling the fibre optic cables of the world and using up precious fossil fuels to cool the banks of computers processing it all it makes me cringe. And consider giving up blogging.