One-Star Insights

As recently discussed, we have something of a love/hate relationship with Amazon reviews around here.

On the one hand, we’re dismayed that in the name of harvesting the low-hanging fruit of quick and easy product feedback we would drive even a single click of traffic into that Rube Goldberg machine of human exploitation that aspires only to creating shareholder value and making sure that nobody ever needs to think more than 48 hours ahead when it comes to ordering toilet paper online. (Or approximately 11 minutes in major urban centers.)

On the other hand…that quick and easy product feedback, tho.

But how about this? Instead of doing the usual thing where we link off to a bunch of awesome reviews related to the product we’re selling today, we’re going to do the opposite. You can learn a lot from a positive review, but you can learn A LOT from a negative one.

So here goes, fresh from a leisurely scroll through the one-star reviews.

We’ll start with KATHLEEN who uses her whole-ass name in her Amazon reviews and also puts the entire thing in caps.

“I am so disappointed. I bought a pack of LOVE CORN [again with the all caps!] cheezy flavor at Target one day as an impulse and they were SO delicious that I had to order more packs online.”

We’re going to stop you right there, Kathleen. Sorry…KATHLEEN. Because you’re already starting off with a rookie mistake. You had a nice little impulse moment and you’re really supposed to leave it at that. You’re never going to duplicate that kind of lightning in a bottle again. Quit trying to relive the magic you experienced in the weirdly sterile glow of the Target checkout area and just appreciate the moment for what it was.

Moving on.

Next up is Luke. Luke’s review stands out because he is presently being showcased as the illustrious “Top Critical Review” which we imagine probably means a lot to him because he actively manages his review account, including weighing in on more than 300 products and uploading an actual photo of himself for his profile.

We almost excluded him from this roundup because technically his top critical review was two stars and not one, but we thought that his Amazonian pedigree coupled with the fact that he reviews a frankly disturbing amount of trashy snack food at least warranted a quick mention, especially in light of the refreshing succinctness of his take:

“Not as good as the other varieties. Seems rather plain compared to the other flavors.”

Luke, we expected better from you. This is obviously unfair. Yes, there are other varieties! And if you wanted something more exotic, MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE PICKED ONE OF THOSE. Clearly you are familiar with them.

This is like how Mini Coopers keep getting bigger because focus group idiots always say they wish they had more space inside. It’s a Mini Cooper, jackass. If you want something bigger, get a different car.

But we digress.

All the other one-star reviews are basically along the lines of “someone clearly fucked all these corn nuts into the box from across the room with no regard for what I actually ordered” or “these are super duper expired.”

Well, guess what?

We’re always exceedingly careful packing up anything other than an IRK (which we ABSOLUTELY fuck into a box from across the room with no regard for literally anything) and we’re quite sure that the corn nuts we have on hand are not expired.

So there you have it.

We scraped the bottom of the digital barrel in an earnest effort to find legitimate reasons not to buy 50 packs of cheezy corn nuts and came up with less than nothing.

Order yours before they’re gone. If you really want to know more, that Luke guy probably has a podcast episode on this.