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Comment by somehnacct3757 | Hacker News Reader

All crowd-sourced online aggregation is bogus. Every single form of it has someone placing their finger on the scale one way or the other. If it isn't a familial corporation it's for-hire bot farms, perhaps even hired by your competition. Or maybe it's the aggregator themselves, running a digital protection racket.

Instead, go read a full review written by a trusted curator.

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There isn't always a trusted curator. Most of the time, there isn't.

I generally rely on my friends' recommendations because they know me (and watch a lot more TV than I do somehow)

Precisely. A single, well-written review will save you more time than scrolling through a list of one-sentence drive-by reviews.

Unfortunately the 'tech' industry loves these type of aggregator websites because of the advertising and affiliate link opportunities. So our public perception of things beccomes more skewed over time due to the Rotten Tomatoes' and Yelps of the world.

>Instead, go read a full review written by a trusted curator.

That's the point, trusted curators have been drifting further and further from what the majority of people find good for a long time.

What critics find good and what the target audience finds good are not the same: https://youtu.be/eFRWDZBH8Dc?t=745

I'm split about this. Is it good or bad? Should we only read and appreciate what the masses read and appreciate? On one hand yeah it would make sense, confirmation of the masses is a thing and not everybody can be wrong. But on the other hand everybody is different and different biases make for different preferences. When I read reviews on the web I always take time to read the negatives to see what they found as negative. Many times that's just bull (valid also about the positives btw), people having beef with whatever, but sometimes they point out interesting bits. And it takes me much less time to read such reviews (and I also learn more) than by watching the entire contents.

I also read negative reviews. But I trust the masses way more than I trust the professional critics. Good example would be metacritic for video games. I look up a game and immediately switch to the User Reviews tab or go to steam reviews.

I think the parent's comment was saying to find reviewers whose tastes align with your own, then trust their reviews for new content. This requires 1) that the media they publish through prints the name of the author; 2) when you read a review, you pay attention to who is writing it; and 3) a period of time to establish a relationship with a reviewer and build a sense of how much your tastes align.

I find the easiest way to do that is to generally read reviews, and when you go see the thing/buy the thing that got reviewed, think back to which reviewers closest aligned to your reaction, then read more of them, and eventually you'll find a small group of reviewers who you trust.

I admit that I haven't found "my" TV reviewer yet, since it seems the world of TV critics is afraid to offer any significant criticism of the shows they're reviewing. I'm not sure if that's an industry thing or if I've just been looking in the wrong places.

Everything on the Internet is fake. For all I know, all user reviews are negative because they are mad at diversity and all professional reviewers are positive because are paid for by Amazon.

Reading reviews just biases taste anyway. My plan is to watch the series, recommend it to my friends if I like it, and continue ignoring everything written on the Internet.

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