Food for Thought (4): The Obsession with Rating

Elitism took a hard hit in recent years, especially academic elitism in children and young adults, as numerous study had suggested that such fierce competing environment from early ages will stunt their mental growth, causing with some serious adverse psychology effects. Suddenly, number and grades are bad.

Image Credit: Klimkin

Then things take a new turn when the era of internet exploded. We beginning to rate stuff, not just restaurant and hotels, but ordinary, everyday stuff. Most system uses a star based system, aka 5 is good, 1 is bad. Some provide short description, most none.

Look around, you should find plentiful of them lurking in each corner. From food, gadgets to rides.

Now, they even able to condense a 150 minutes movie into stars, offering no more than 20 words as description. Same goes to books with tens of thousand of word over hundreds of pages.

Do we really need to measure every moment we experience into stars, I wonder.

When 5 Star become Normal

When I was much younger, the only 5 star I came by is those sky touching, glamouring hotels in downtown Kuala Lumpur. Dad will bring the whole family on a buffet feast on special occasions, where we can enjoy 5 star culinary experiences.

Fast forward 10 years later, I’m scrolling through the promotion and deal list on a local online shopping site. It’s 11th November by the way, dubbed as Singles' Day or Guang Gun Day (光棍节), nearly every gadgetry I browsed had a 4 or 5 star rating. Things improve tremendously for the past decades, I guess?

I have just one question though, if 90% of the stuff we get our hand onto is “Excellent” “Superior Quality” or “Very Satisfied”, did we actually enjoy excellence, quality and satisfaction, or it’s just a very very very polite way to say, it’s not bad?

Then Come the Writer

I’ve my fair share of experiences that I get “aggressively persuaded” by service provider on the spot to give 5 star reviews. I do understand that they are concerned over the rating they received, largely because their livelihood hand on those stars.

While on the other hand, a whole new industry emerged purely because of such phenomenon: Writers that only produces reviews on premises they had never set foot before. Again I don’t blame these people, as demand and supply dictate what’s relevant, not the individual’s skill and choices.

The Shed at Dulwich, probably the most famous fake on Tripadvisor. Click here to read more.

This make me again questioning the motive of such rating system in the first place, and why would it is still thriving in today’s world that value authenticity and personal experience over other aspects.

What's The Point?

I’m actually worried where would this path lead us to.

Image Credit: Yakir

When everyone is rather same, as in we all get “good rating” even tho we are just “fine”, do we still get motivated to become the better one, to excel and to propel ourselves ahead of the rest, not to just pleases or awe them, but to fulfill the purpose of our life?

Maybe when the next occasion arises and ask us for the ratings, it’s time for us to pause and reflect on this whole thing, at least for a while.