Beyond Good and Evil: Escaping Five Star Tyranny
It is absurd to think that my experience of a movie or book — a high-dimensional interaction of my mood, experiences, interests, and associations as well as the film’s setting, style, allusions, actors, and themes — could be reduced to a one-dimensional axis of good and bad. It is even more absurd to think that my one-dimensional projection would match up with the average of everyone else’s.
There are movies with lackluster stories which are visually stunning. There are movies that are amateurish but fun. There are movies that make you uncomfortable but you can’t stop thinking about them for months.
Most importantly, there’s that book or movie that you discovered totally by chance and no one else seems to like but it spoke to you, and you cherish it. Under five-star tyranny, you might have never found it. For me, it was the Rama sequels, by Arthur C Clarke, which I adored and which Goodreads doesn’t.
You might say that five-star ratings are a useful filter: at least you won’t consume anything bad, and there’s plenty of good stuff out there. Sure, but you also won’t find the thing that’s perfectly you. Five-star systems encourage a more generic world: if each one-star review costs four five-star reviews, then every author, filmmaker, restaurant owner, musician, and mini-golf course designer needs to play it safe — be inoffensive — trod the tried-and-true path. Have you noticed how much more boring mini-golf has become? No? Trust me.