I think I've stopped trusting five-star reviews.

Was looking at reviews for something online and noticed I was doing the same thing I always do.

Ignoring the five-star ones and going straight to the one-star reviews.

Which is kind of funny, because those are probably not a perfect representation either.

The five-star reviews all seem to say some version of "great product, fast shipping, highly recommend."

Then the one-star reviews make it sound like the thing arrived on fire. I don't really trust either extreme anymore.

Apparently this has become a big enough problem that the FTC introduced a rule against fake reviews, paid positive or negative reviews, and certain other misleading practices.

Which is good, obviously.

But even if every review were written by a real person, I'm not sure the average score would tell me very much.

Someone might give a restaurant five stars because the staff were friendly. Someone else gives it two because the music was too loud.

Both could be completely honest. And then there's the fact that people who had a perfectly normal experience might not bother reviewing anything at all.

So a 4.8 doesn't necessarily mean nearly everyone loved it. It means the people who left reviews averaged 4.8.

I still read them, though. Mostly the boring three-star ones. Those somehow feel more useful.