Thanks to Colin. John from Bristol was the first man to pioneer the 3G phone, the first customer to review one, the first person to get a ten-letter word on Countdown and, most of all, first to comment on shill reviews. Shill reviews, apparently, are when a company or organisation deliberately skews online reviews or rating systems in favour of its own ideas or products. I can’t for the life of me understand why that might interest HYSers.
I glimpsed first-hand what a bad review might do when I was one of the first to buy a 3G phone, a few years ago. Very disappointed with it, I wrote an honest review on a website and a week later saw that 2000 people had viewed it. Assuming a large portion of those would-be customers would not have bought that phone afterward, I estimate that one review carried a potential loss of revenue upward of £180,000 – from one disgruntled customer. Power to the people!
John, Bristol
I am posting from the top-secret underground hideout I share with Salman Rushdie and the Scarlet Pimpernel, as John from Bristol is forever googling himself and I could have made a very powerful enemy.
I looked a bit further down and found this:
What this article doesn’t mention is the editorial process of moderated reviews and comments and how the bias of an organisation can be pushed through the selection of favourable comments. When comments are pre-moderated how are users to be sure of the unbiasedness of the site’s editors?
The_Reveller, London
I’m not sure what you’re saying The_Reveller. Is it something to do with Muslims?
57 Responses to “Tremble O Motorola”
I once shook my head in disappointment at the view from my hotel window, assuming that a large proportion of would be guests view that window with high powered telescopes the hotel should now be out of business, its staff dispersed to the winds and its owners forced to pleasure russian oligarchs for small change. All from one disgruntled customer who assumes the world gives a horses smeg-ring for his thoughts. Power to the people!
arse
I imagine that a large propertion of the 2000 will have realised that John is a pompous shit-thimble, and so if anything his review might have led to increased sales.
I bet you also went to the hotel and shouted it at them too. Well done.
Extrapolating wildly from the above comment, using figures I pulled from thin air, I estimate that John from Bristol is about 175% less interesting in conversation than a sackful of severed squirrel sctrota.
Bet you wish you’d gone for “bollocks” and not the alliteration.
If I’m right. And I am. I am infallible donchaknow.
A bag of battered badger bollocks?
A backpack of bludgeoned budgerigar balls?
Lovely!
Don’t click on the link in Nancy’s name above unless you’ve got noscript enabled. Fucks with Firefox.
And crashes Chrome.
And is as about as funny as a punctured lung.
I mean, cheers, like.
Safari too.
Cunt.
Really. Don’t click through to Nancy.
But it doesn’t crash Opera.
What does that page do to IE!!?
Nancy is a bad girl. Evil, some might say. Please don’t click through.
Does anyone here use IE?
Nancy is clearly 1984RFR’s wife, vreaking her rewengay.
Has Nancy given us an unwelcome insight into the “mind” of a true mentalist HYSer?
The last few posters (myself included) are not joking. Don’t click through. And don’t think about green elephants !!
I said DON’T think about green elephants.
I tried Nancy’s link in IE8, then I really regretted ignoring everyone else’s advice. Don’t click it!
It loaded up a bunch of unpleasant photos, tried (and failed) to install an ActiveX control, then had a bunch of embedded Quicktime videos (i.e. several new video controls spreading across/down the page). It didn’t crash the browser though; I just had to wait a while until I could close that tab.
I used to work in a bookshop. For one gimmicky edition of the Hitch-HikersGTTGalaxy they put a big red button on the front cover. It was ’3D’ and from the right angle it looked very convincing. On the button was written in stern letters, “Do not press this button.”
It gave us lowly till-jockeys much amusement to watch people interact with the front cover. They’d see it, frown, then push the button. Everytime. They always automatically reached out and pushed the button without thinking. Then they’d laugh at being made to feel stupid.
So I will now click on Nancy without thinking. Then laugh at being made to feel stupid.
oooooooooh! Curse you blockquotes…
I don’t know Nancy, so I haven’t clicked on her.
I wonder just how bad its got to be before you DON’T push the button?
Even if the button said “Don’t push this under any circumstances or you’ll get cancer of the scrotum” I bet some wag would still think “Oh, fuck it! I’ve just got to KNOW.”
Back on-topic.
I once gave Gordo Clown a bad review on a well-known public internet forum. I estimate that one review carried a potential loss of voters upward of fuck-all.
ShitForBrains, Engerland, not Scotchland.
Nelson,
How about providing a little button to insert <blockquote></blockquote>
Or is this a deliberate poicy to seperate out the dribbling keyboard bashers.
****************************
Dear HYS,
How about providing a little button to check submissions for ill-informed, bigotted, second-hand [fill in blanks] keyboard-bashing.
****************************
Would one of the Nancy-clickers elaborate on ‘unpleasant photos’? (but not too much detail)
If I was a gambling man, which I’m not, I’d wager that the web-empowered John,Bristol didn’t actually get his money back. Instead of a full refund, all he has to show for it is a shit phone and the dubious satisfaction of having pulled a vague statistic out of his ass mixed with unfounded assumptions, in order to convince himself that he has got his revenge on a company that makes more money in 1 second that he’ll earn in his entire lifetime.
Way to go John, the Cider-Swigging Ralph Nadar of Bumpkin County, England (not UK).
Now get his, googling-man, two years ago I wrote in the text-input area of the comments section of a corporate website that sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps were the financial equivalant of cow dung, and I crashed the entire world’s economy as a result.
Now there’s fucking power my boy.
Seconded – want to click, at work, etc. Elaborate…
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nimp.org
Don’t click on nimp links.
He does raise a valid point. From which it can be presumed he copied it from somewhere I suppose. If he’d understood it he wouldn’t have bothered posting it. In the trade it’s called “cherry picking” and it’s a technique that predates the internets by decades.
The way around it is to throw off the chains of userdom and become an editor yourself.
That’s right, youu too can become a major opinion former like John,Bristol. Have your say on how the world should run, and make it happen today! Please mail me for a price list of my hosting, set-up, and domain registration service. I can also provide you with software to auto-moderate unsavoury facts and opinions from your site.
For a moment there I was stuck, I didn’t click on the nancy link but then Nelson posted a link and said don’t click on nimp links but the link had nimp in it so I didn’t know if it was a test and should I click it to find out what not to click or should I not click it because it clearly said don’t click it…………I clicked it…….phew!! Nelson isn’t so evil after all.
I need a lie down now, all this thinking is exhausting
Thanks Nelson, thought goatse probably featured
Review: I got the latest Alt-F4 package a few months back and I’ve had nothing but grief. It’s way overpriced and the software’s shit. I loaded on Firefox and it crashed more times than Aeroflot. It does bugger all that it says on the tin. A bug-ridden piece of junk and the after-sales service can be summed up in one word: None. Go elsewhere.
http://www.xkcd.com/605/
@alt-f4, I already have my say in how the world is run-I post on HYS, everyone there has valid and sensible theories on how the world should be run, you have only got to look at Joy Pattinsons posts and Topsy Turvy and I think our next Prime Minister and all round superhero for the world has to be 1984RFR-I’ll send him a text (at 4.42am) to ask if he is willing to help out (I won’t forget to say hello to his missus from everyone here either)
i saw an interesting blurb about a similar item where a guy gave a VERY favourable review of an not-so-attractive t-shirt (as a joke/experiment) and the sales for the shirt skyrocketed thanks to the glowing review. article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8061031.stm.
quote: After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women.
I too purchased an Alt F4 package and I have to say that it is the best package I have ever seen to do whatever it is it does.
Value for Money: 9/10 (downloaded cracked version)
Customer Service: 10/10 (never used them)
Pretty Colours on Box: 8/10 (had to make my own box)
Oh,… Alt-F4. I thought you meant Alt F4.
no, that’s crap.
ALT-F4 SOFTWARE CUSTOMER ANNOUNCEMT
Due to one bad review and one query as to our software’s usefulness on an obscure, albeit googlable web forum, we have gone out of business. Our CEO is now destitute and rueing the day he tried to put one over on a savvy HYS contributor. Customers should note that an undocumented function call in our system was triggered shortly before the baliffs siezed our terminals and your PCs will shortly begin to play random gay-themed content that is NSFW before exploding and spraying boiling acid into your eyes. That’ll learn you.
Brilliant!! This is worth it just for the title:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8139322.stm
Who’s next up on the evolutionary scale?
Thanks for that, Simon. I rate your contribution as 9/10. I shall pass the link on to my Mum – she’s a massive pedant and has always wanted a pet monkey*.
Yes, I am the *normal* one in my family.
*We like to wind her up that she looks like THIS: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/1/557529_d3f5bdb885.jpg
Hi, I’m back!!! Did you miss me, branespeakers? Well, my message to John (Ooh! We have the same name!) is, I am posting this from a 3G+ phone and it is AMAZING!!! I love it. What I would like to point out is my phone has been miss advertised over 60+ websites, which, in John’s mind means over 600000 potential customers have not got this feature packed phone, I feel sorry for them.
Lovely quotes from Mr Griffin today, as reported on the Beeb:
“”But the only measure, sooner or later, which is going to stop immigration and stop large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans dying on the way to get over here is to get very tough with those coming over. Frankly, they need to sink several of those boats.”
So we should just kill them to save them from starvation??
What a wonderful, caring, compassionate man he is – funny that none of the other Euro groups, even the fascist ones, will allow the BNP to join them now they’ve pitched up in Brussels! I bet having to live there half the time is really going to wind him up too
So to stop sub-saharan africans from dying, frankly, we have to sink several of their boats. Is Nick Griffin an HYSer?
Wouldn’t it be lovely if the BNP’s single representative in Brussels discovers they have good beer. Then that their chocs, cakes and pastries are good and that their girls don’t smell of vinegar and chemical tan, followed by the fact the public transport works and the people are civil and very polite… and his time abroad leads him down paths of gastronomique dicovery, multiculturalism and liberal thought. So that eventually when he returns to his BNP thug mates (wearing Crocs and bearing gifts of good wine and cheese) he suddenly sees what hideous low-brow trogs they are, and runs off to the Guardian to bare his soul about it.
And with that impossibly optimistic dreamy thought, I’m off to bed. Nighty night.
The best place to go near the European Parliament is “Friterie Chez Antoine” in Place Jourdan. There’s no beer, but they serve what are regarded as the best chips in all the world.
Griffin should be force fed them until he’s so fat he’d sink the boats himself just by boarding them, instead of expecting other people to do his dirty work for him. “they need to sink…”. What a prat.
The glass is definitely half-full for funny peculiar, with optimism like that
For beer, I think that the ‘Au Vieux du Temps’ estaminet is the best – a lovely hidden gem with stained glass windows, hard-bitten old barmaids and a couple of the local winos, but my god the beer is good
U guys talkin bout the Louise Weiss Building in Strasbourg, or Leopoldruimte in Brussels?
The Brussels bar I recommend for Mr Griffin is ‘A La Mort Subite’.
PS. Trying to find the cricket on the car radio earlier and revisited the joys of TalkSport – HYS for those that can’t write.
Leopoldruimte, Brussel. Where we’d like to see Griffin stuffed full of chips, half-drowned in strawberry-flavoured beer, then booted out of a taxi in Molenbeek wearing a t-shirt with “Allah sucks cock” written on it in Arabic.
Even better’d be getting him a tat across his forehead saying ‘Mohammed’ in between the fruity beer and Molenbeek boot-out. Then he’d have a fitting memento for posterity should he survive the night.
Fruity beer in Belgium!
Jeez, that takes me back!
I have fond memories of seeing cherry-flavoured Stella on sale.
It was foul!!! But the 14 bottles of the ordinary kind was luverly!
If only he could visit all the cities and towns of Belgium, finishing his tour off by re-enacting Martin Gleeson’s marvellously gruesome death scene in ‘In Bruges’…
Aaargh, I meant Brendan Gleeson! Pissflaps.
Voila! A La Mort Subite. Delerium Terems a la Mort Subite. Vraiment. I remember that crowded old bar very fondly… but not well.
I know Rugby League players are talented but that’s ridiculous…
The comment was a dig at the BBC’s over moderation of comments. Most sites will simply remove BS and sam but the only ever publish a select few.
Not this site. We publish any old bullshit. So thanks.