1036: Reviews

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 20:55, 15 August 2012 by Lcarsos (talk | contribs) (Created page with explanation from the blog)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search
Reviews
I plugged in this lamp and my dog went rigid, spoke a sentence of perfect Akkadian, and then was hurled sideways through the picture window. Even worse, it's one of those lamps where the switch is on the cord.
Title text: I plugged in this lamp and my dog went rigid, spoke a sentence of perfect Akkadian, and then was hurled sideways through the picture window. Even worse, it's one of those lamps where the switch is on the cord.

Explanation

This comic couldn't be more true. When shopping for anything via reviews, whether it be electronics or even something as simple as lamps like the comic demonstrates, one negative review can spoil a lot of positive reviews. That hits home even more if the review is specific. This usually occurs because humans attach more weight to anecdotes and specific stories. This comic points out the absurdity of paying attention to those reviews. The 2nd frame starts out normal and then proceeds to get more and more absurd all the way to the image text.

In the image text, Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia.


comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

Even better is when reviewers start talking about other products that they've used in the past, and you're suddenly investigating and comparing capacity, weight and compartment placement between 20-odd messenger bags. Davidy22[talk] 10:03, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm surprised they didn't find any bobcats. Black Hat should have expanded his enterprise beyond eBay by now. Anonymous 17:57, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I do this too, but I mainly look for trends in the bad reviews (DOA, Stopped working after a few months, etc), rather then one bad review spoiling a large number of positive ones. 173.245.55.66 16:55, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

 I was shopping on Amazon for a 25' fiber-optic cable. One cable had mostly 5-star reviews, but one knocked 2 stars off because, in the reviewer's words, "it was a little too long for my needs." They why did you order a 25-foot cable??? Idiot.

The title text seems to refer to some horror movie. Arifsaha (talk) 19:25, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Before I edited it, the explanation contained "For comparison, one can get a decent lamp at IKEA for only about US$15!" We're all geeks here; I can't be the only one who read that as a factorial. (In which case, the Swiss lampmaker's lamps are cheap enough to be well worth the trip.)108.162.216.56 18:05, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Is nobody gonna add a page about the lamp that ended with a metallic taste in the reviewers mouth and his cats going deaf?