Online reviews: acquisition addiction can lead to creativity

By Peter Butler Redstone Review

LYONS – Back in the 20th century, if you wanted or needed something, you boarded the bus and went to the shops. When I was young this was exciting because I might persuade my Mom to buy me something nice. There was a difference between home, which was a fixed and known quantity, and Peascod Street in Windsor or Slough High Street, which promised exciting new discoveries and unpredictable lusting.

But the local shops eventually lost their dazzle when I got into slot car racing. I had a Scalextric set but this was better. Magazines showed how you could get a few tools and some modest materials, like sheets of brass and piano wire, and solder up a 1/32 scale chassis that looked great and went like stink. Now the only way to get my geeky widgets was to mail an order to an ad in the back of Model Cars magazine.

But look at us now. We have unfettered access to the whole planet. Delve the sum of all human knowledge on Wikipedia.

Learn almost any skill on YouTube: mending your fridge; installing headlamps in your car or how to play the guitar solo from Stairway to Heaven. And to soothe the incurable disease of your stuff acquisition syndrome there are Amazon and eBay who provide access to every factory on the planet. All you have to do is choose the good stuff and avoid the bad. The dawn of fake reviews is here.

I was an early adopter of eBay because it offered a plethora of gems like vintage woodworking tools and old music CDs. I used Amazon as a alternative source when eBay failed to deliver. Because of my mind meld with all the other specialized gear consumers of the world, I started writing reviews.

Reviews of stainless steel hinges. Yes I know it’s sad, but you can write hundreds of words rejoicing in metal hardware. It was my personal rebuke to those reviewers for whom the pinnacle of creativity was “My husband loves this.” Over the years I started to enjoy the freedom to wax lyrical about a door knob or a birthday card. Avoid naughty words and you can say almost anything you like. It’s an under-exploited area of creative writing. Hey, if David Bianculli can be a Professor of Watching Television at a real university, I can be the Tolstoy of domestic junk. But then my harmless pastime got serious. I received an invitation from Amazon to join a program called Amazon Vine. I could become a Vine Voice. I was granted access to secret pages where I could select products. Free stuff with fast shipping. I always thought there was no such thing as a free lunch, but here I am apparently approaching midday in the All-You-Can-Eat Saloon. My first item was a tungsten carbide router bit – sorry I did warn you that this was nerdsville. Barely suppressing the smuggest grin on the planet, I earnestly frothed 414 words of poetic genius and awarded five stars. Would Jeff be impressed I wondered? Then a pair of cut-resistant