Amazon.com is weird, like a cult where the rules change daily. In an earlier post I described how their editors removed the word "sexual" from a review of mine and replaced it with "inapropriate [sic]." And according to the New York Times, they recently outed all their anonymous reviewers (in Canada) and started a companywide program that validates whether your reviews are written under your "Real Name" or a "Pen Name." In the early days of the site they had a category called "I am the author of this book and I want to comment on it." I wrote an explanatory blurb about the post-hypnotic catalog, listing some artists depicted in the book, etc. and captioned it "notes from an artist and essayist in the exhibition." A couple of years ago, the "i am the author..." category was eliminated, and they moved the blurb to my list of reviews of other people's books, CDs, and movies. I thought that was strange, but let it go (it's not like they post an email for complaints). A month or two ago, the "review" disappeared from my list. It felt like they thought I was scamming, reviewing my own book. At any rate, I've always used my own name, but my "favorite reviewer" was dogmatico, who I see has also been removed from my page.
All this may ultimately mean less joke fodder such as this post celebrating the lowest ranked reviews of great works. dogmatico's favorite reviewer, "doo doo brown," to cite another example, made a career of writing dismissive reviews of canonical works of Western philosophy. (hat tips to Jim and Bill)
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Amazon.com is weird, like a cult where the rules change daily. In an earlier post I described how their editors removed the word "sexual" from a review of mine and replaced it with "inapropriate [sic]." And according to the New York Times, they recently outed all their anonymous reviewers (in Canada) and started a companywide program that validates whether your reviews are written under your "Real Name" or a "Pen Name."
In the early days of the site they had a category called "I am the author of this book and I want to comment on it." I wrote an explanatory blurb about the post-hypnotic catalog, listing some artists depicted in the book, etc. and captioned it "notes from an artist and essayist in the exhibition." A couple of years ago, the "i am the author..." category was eliminated, and they moved the blurb to my list of reviews of other people's books, CDs, and movies. I thought that was strange, but let it go (it's not like they post an email for complaints). A month or two ago, the "review" disappeared from my list. It felt like they thought I was scamming, reviewing my own book. At any rate, I've always used my own name, but my "favorite reviewer" was dogmatico, who I see has also been removed from my page.
All this may ultimately mean less joke fodder such as this post celebrating the lowest ranked reviews of great works. dogmatico's favorite reviewer, "doo doo brown," to cite another example, made a career of writing dismissive reviews of canonical works of Western philosophy. (hat tips to Jim and Bill)
- tom moody 8-03-2004 7:32 pm