How many times have you said you wanted to go out to watch a movie, only to be prevented because the movie has bad reviews on websites like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb? Compare that to how many times you’ve watched a movie without a review, enjoyed it, and then gone back to see that the movie actually received poor reviews?
It is not only limited to just movies, but everyday products or experiences in everyday life. Everything that we see, do, or use is being reviewed, and we dictate our lives based off of those reviews. It could be a bottle of shampoo, a new snack that you haven’t tried before, or a new drink that you haven’t tried either.
It is almost as if we aren’t able to make a decision on a whim anymore, Instead we rely on the reviews and what everyone else says about the thing that we are looking at.
It could be due to a lot of reasons. For a city like Vancouver, we could be subscribing to this idea or this culture purely because of the high cost of living. We want to make sure that we are getting the absolute best bang for our buck, and not wasting money on something that will not give us the fulfillment or satisfaction that we are looking for.
And it isn’t that we are looking at professional reviews specifically either. It’s coming from websites like Reddit, or Amazon reviews where it feels like another person giving us advice on the product instead of a professional review, that can feel artificial or bought. It’s like we’re constantly looking for advice for something that we are looking at to purchase instead of looking for a robotic, professional review on a big name website.
Genuine question…?
WHO EVEN CARES ABOUT RATINGS ANYMORE?
We have entered a culture where people review bomb shows they don’t like for the hell of it
And others BEG people to give position reviews so show to get higher ratings.
It’s fake as hell man pic.twitter.com/zH1R47LZM4
— thebashanator (@thebashanator7) April 26, 2026
That’s not necessarily saying that this aspect of our culture as a city is a bad thing. It can help us save money on purchasing products or experiences that just are not worth the money, but it has also led to the death of spontaneous activity or purchases because we rely so heavily on those reviews.
Will this ever change? Probably not. It may take a lot of time before we are able to fully trust our own instincts with a product or movie before we decide we don’t need to go look at a review. It might also take the cost of living to go down as well, but who knows when that’s gonna happen.