I’ve noticed a trend – a real incarnation of the soothsaying visionaries of Hollywood’s yesteryear. Not Light Sabers (disappointingly yet) or particle transportation (when will we actually get this for goodness sake?)… Instead, cast yourselves (or your IMDB research if you’re < 30ish) back to 1981.
The central theme to this post is a classic, videotape movie – ‘Scanners’. In this B-list horror flick, 273 of the 4 billion humans on Earth were adorned with super telepathic-type powers – able to hear the thoughts of others around them. Sounds cool to a teenager; many mischievous ideas crossed my mind at the time, and I thought it might be an even cooler power than being invisible at one stage.
However, as the director (David Cronenberg, apparently) helped us look deeper – like most super-‘hero’ stories, this was not a great weapon that was without its baggage… In fact, the gifted ones were tragically cursed. They couldn’t get the ‘noise’ out of their heads!!
Some tried drilling into their own heads, which was a little bit stupid, let’s be honest. Gift? Curse? Better than being invisible? The real problem was the indiscriminant volume of data they were exposed to; they couldn’t filter or make use of it in any meaningful way. It completely consumed their consciousness and drove them to complete distraction, and eventually madness! So much noise, so little useful information.
Having taken inspiration from this film, lately I have turned Scanner. Not, like a really powerful one, just entry-level really.
Last week we were recommended a place to eat, in foodie-central – Chicago. When I looked up the address on my Google Maps app to plot the route, it popped up the street address, phone number and a collection of reviews. They weren’t good… Thereby causing a debate between my betrothed and I – the obvious choice was to ignore the reviews, cast them aside and get on with the evening like any sane couple – but we didn’t, we changed plans.
So, somebody that knew us – recommended a place that they thought we would love. And we changed our minds because a bunch of people who didn’t know either of us didn’t like their own unique experiences (dated between Mar 2007 and Jan 2010). Soberly we both reflected the next day that it’s a bit like overhearing a random conversation behind you in the bleachers about a marriage that didn’t work out and deciding to cancel your own wedding plans.
The alternative we opted for (based on a quick search of restaurants in the area) was ok, it was easy to see why it would average >4 stars from the 20 collective reviewers. For us, it was probably a 2.5.
The opinion-noise is omnipresent. But not omni-relevant. When you have experienced the power of crowd-commentary to your advantage, you just kind of tune in, that’s my excuse anyway. But it’s not a regulated digital station you’ve now got on your receiver – maybe Sirius channel 8 playing another 1981 year-maker like UK pop sensation Bucks Fizz – no, it’s a pirate social-CB-radio tuner that is funneling a thousand hobbyists’ vocals into a real-time stream that is recorded verbatim (forever) and summarized by algorithms that are currently at version 1.0b.
As humans in this new social opinionosphere, we can tune in to some channels and out of others. We can also contribute to those that we feel we have value to add to the community of listeners and those that we wish to be present on for self serving interests like venting, ego, revenge, financial advantage or fun. Unless you trust the actual individuals or at least associate yourself with the category that the opinions emerge from, being influenced by them must be a bit bonkers?
That said, my fiancée has just finished hand crafting a vacation for us in Costa Rica – having spent 2 weeks in deep analysis of all opinions she could find, she has developed a nervous twitch every time she sees a new comment posted on one of our hotels or tour guides.
I’ll just get the skull-piecing drill bit from the toolbox…
I’ve just returned from two weeks in France and having used a booking website to book the hotels as we went along, I must say, my experience was very similar to yours Paul.
You read so much you don’t know who to believe. And you don’t know who to believe because you don’t know them. Ended up we gave up and if the pictures looked nice, we just booked it.
This technique proved as just successful as review filtering – we got some good ones and not so good ones!