MadTheory Presents: The Diary of an Epinions Loser.
Apr 25 '01 (Updated Apr 30 '01)
The Bottom Line A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but if your mind is already wasted, at least keep it from writing on Epinions.
In the tradition of Being John Malkovich and all those other movies that allowed you to venture into someone else’s mind (yeah, I couldn’t think of any others. Sue me.), I present for your reading pleasure, the diary of one of the many who choose to abuse our beloved Epinions.com. Please fasten your seatbelts and keep your arms inside the rather small cerebellum at all times.
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March 1, 2001- Today I discovered this great new site called Epinions.com. These morons pay people actual money to write reviews on products and services! Needless to say, I signed up immediately. I even chose a terrific ID: Greedy_SOB! Great huh? I can hardly wait to get in there and start making money! If everything goes well, I’ll have the money to buy that new 2001 Porsche Boxster in time for Summer Break!
March 2, 2001 – I went back to that Epinions site today and actually took the time to read their Frequently Asked Questions section. It says I’ll only get paid 1 cent for each member read, and an undisclosed amount as the “Income Share”, that depends on how many non-members read my article. At first I was like, “What the f**k? One penny???” But then I did the math. Epinions has thousands of members right? If each of those members reads my review, that should generate a few hundred dollars in no time! Then there are like, millions of people on the Internet each day, right? If each of those million people read my review, my income share should be…WOOOO HOOOO! I’m gonna be rich! I think I’ll get the cherry-red Boxster. It matches my new Dr J’s…
March 3, 2001 - I actually posted my couple of first articles today at Epinions. I figured that in order to get the most hits quickly, I’ll write my reviews on the most popular products. I wrote a review on that great new Metallica CD I downloaded off of Napster (royalties my a**, sellout bastards), and my Diamond Rio MP3 player.
Whew! It was harder than I thought writing those reviews. I ran out of ideas on my Metallica review, so my review ended up being like 30 words short of the minimum word length. It was no problem though, I just had to Add Some Filler to get over the hump. I was clever about how I did it too! I didn’t just type ‘a a a a’ over and over again, like some other losers. I took the sentence, “I love this band!” and flipped it several times throughout the review, like “Metallica is the band that I love!” and, “I love bands, but I don’t love any other band as much as I love this band!” plus my personal favorite, “I LOVE YOU, BAAAND!”
April 2, 2001 - It’s been about a month since I posted my reviews, and what the hell? Both of my reviews together, plus the income share, only earned me like 30 cents! THIS SUCKS!!! Where the hell is this “global community” crap they keep talking about on those IBM commercials??? How am I supposed to buy my Porsche by this summer earning 30 frigging cents a month?
April 4, 2001 - OK. I’ve calmed down a little now. I’ve decided that nothing’s going to stop me from getting that car. I have to find a way to earn more money on this site! I thought about clicking on the Member Center to actually read some of these sorry reviews on how to properly earn some deniro on Epinions, but then I figured that if I can just write as many reviews as humanly possible between now and August, I should be burning up Route 66 in no time! Let’s see: a 2001 Porsche Boxster costs around $60,000. Now to find out how many reviews I would need to write. $60,000 divided by $0.30 per review equals…GOOD LORD! Two Hundred Thousand reviews! I guess I’d better get started!
April 11, 2001 - It’s been a rough week, but I’m proud of myself! In seven days, I’ve written over 150 reviews, all of which are exactly 100 words. How did I accomplish this you ask? Easy! First I wrote quick, half-a**ed reviews on every products I own. That got me to about 30 reviews. Then I searched Epinions for the most popular products and proceeded to Write Reviews On Products I Had Never Even Used. I wrote reviews on new movies, CDs, and software and just lied all over the place. Heck, I even wrote a review of Summer’s Eve Feminine Douche, and I’m a guy! I picked an awesome title for it too: “Something Smells, but it’s Sure Not Teen Spirit!” You like? Who cares that these reviews don’t help consumers “make buying decisions”? Screw the consumers!
After about 50 of those, my fingers started to hurt from all the typing, so I decided to use my old college term-paper buddy, Mr. Cut & Paste. I’d just find a review that I liked, copy the body, then paste it in the New Opinion field like it was my own work! Like my Ethics teacher said, “it’s only Plagiarism if you get caught.” Besides, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, just imagine what copying is! I’m practically worshipping them! They all claim that they’re ‘not in it for the money’ anyway! Then just give that money to me! It doesn’t bother me at all that it’s illegal and against the Terms of Service at Epinions. Screw Epinions! There is no intellectual property except for the stuff that’s mine!
I’ve been kinda busy with work since my promotion (Senior Adidas Striper! It still sounds too good to be true!), so I still haven’t posted my reviews yet, but I’m about to. I figure if I Post Several Reviews All At Once, it will fill the “Newest Opinions” section, pretty much guaranteeing that if someone clicks on a review there, it will be one of mine! Granted, it will flood that section, pretty much knocking everyone else’s reviews from the front page into second-page oblivion, but who cares! This is all about survival of the fittest, baby!
April 15, 2001 - Great news, diary! All my efforts are working! By quintupling my production, I’ve almost doubled the total number of hits I received! I haven’t quite figured out why those numbers aren’t proportional, but so what! I’m that much closer to Porsche nirvana. Look at those pennies roll in! Cha-ching! Only several thousand more reviews to go!
April 16, 2001 - More great news! Being the creative and original individual that I am, I’ve thought up an ingenious way to attract even more people to my reviews! What I do is I lurk in the “Newest Opinions” section and just Rubberstamp all the reviews as Very Helpful, without even reading them! That way everyone who sees my VH’s on their reviews will feel grateful and return the favor! Even if they give me bad ratings, It doesn’t matter, because they just got me a penny! Why should I worry that it lowers the overall value of all other reviews, as well as the site itself? I don’t care about my crap reviews, why should they care about theirs?
April 17, 2001 - I’ve gone through a few hundred of my reviews and I’ve found that some most people had the absolute nerve to rate them as Somewhat Helpful and even Not Helpful. Who do these people think they are? Just because I put absolutely NO EFFORT into my horrible, mind-numbing reviews, they think they can disrespect me like that? And look at this idiot, MadTheory! He has the unmitigated gall to leave a comment on my last review, telling me why he gave it an SH and giving me tips on how to get a higher rating!
I know what I’ll do. I’ll rate several of HIS reviews with SHs and NHs. Never mind that it’ll just be a few poor rating amongst the hundreds, nay, THOUSANDS of VH’s this truly tremendous writer has accumulated. I’m sure he’ll break down and cry like a little girl when he sees my rating!!! Bwaaaaahahahahaa! I’ll call it, um… ‘Vengeance’ rating? No... how about ‘Retribution’ rating? Nah! ‘Settling the Score’ rating? OOOH, WAIT! Revenge Rating! I just better make I keep my ID hidden. I’m too much of a scared little punk to publicly challenge his sheer awesomeness.
April 20, 2001 - OK MadTheory! That’s it! I’m tired of your useful comments and your annoying SH and NH ratings! I’m going to Write an Editorial Telling The Epinions Community How Much I Hate You! I’ll tell them about your stupid little ratings, and your stupid little reviews, and your stupid little comments, and your stupid little web of trust, and it’ll be creative, and goodly written!
Plus, I'll be able to make money off my rants! People will see me kicking dirt all over this guy, and I’ll be instantly popular! We will all unite in the common goal of destroying MadTheory! I single handedly will bring about world peace! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Then I’ll….wait. Who is this guy in here with the CDC-type uniform on? Why is he pointing that tranquilizer gun at me!? Why am I still typing and not running!!!??? Nooooofp[f=fejkkjhkefzzzzzz
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Hopefully this will give you some insight into those individuals who enjoy exploiting this site. MadTheory Laboratories has humanely tagged this particular subject for further study. No subjects were harmed during the course of this experiment. Well, maybe a little, but it was fun watching him squirm. PREPARE THE ANAL PROBE!
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Epinions.com ID:
madtheory
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 - Top 100 |
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Location: Dallas,TX
Reviews written: 487
Trusted by: 591 members
About Me:
DON'T CALL IT A COMEB... wait. I guess you actually can call it a comeback.
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