One Star: A Culture of Negativity

What I have often noticed about myself is that I do not always understand the reasons for the things I do. I have recently taken up reviewing every book I read and posting those reviews on goodreads. At the time I only did this because I felt like it, but over time I realized the reasons I kept reviewing books. The first reason is that by keeping track of every book I read I am actually forced to finish every book I read (or at least most of them). I usually have a terrible habit of getting distracted and stopping to read books before I am done. The second reason was that by taking the time to review a book I actually force myself to think about the book, and to consider both the good and bad aspects of it. This actually forces me to consider the themes contained in the book, but also to consider whether a book I hated had good qualities.

Often through this reviewing process I will be forced to change the star rating I had expected to give the book. Goodreads works on the regular five star scale with one star being labelled as "hated it", and five stars as "loved it". I reviewed a book recently and had every intention of giving it two stars but by the time I was done I realized that it was a three star book (and the reverse has happened as well). I have also recently started to read other people's reviews on goodreads and I have noticed something that I think is very unfortunate. People seem to rate books one or five stars more than any other amount. I noticed this phenomenon at first when I was reading a one star review that only really said positive things about the book. So I did the only logical thing a person could do in this situation; I looked at the reviewer's account and proceeded to read all of their reviews. The reviewer had given every single thing they reviewed either one star or five stars, meaning that if they liked a book they would give it five stars and if they didn't they would give it one. Then I noticed that this is an incredibly common trend on goodreads, chapters, imdb, and any site where people can rate things. I have dubbed this the "one star/five star phenomenon" because naming things is clearly my strength.

What I think is happening with these reviews is that people see something in a book that they do not like and therefore invalidates the rest of the work. So lets say that I were to read a book and I loved the first four hundred pages of that book, but then I got to page four hundred and one and hated the events that took place on that page. This should lead me to lowering my rating of this book because I would not give a book five stars if I hated the conclusion. But I would be crazy to think that that should mean that the book is only worth one star since I really did enjoy four hundred pages of that four hundred and one page book. So why is it that so many people will let a flaw absolutely destroy an entire work for them? I think it comes from that lack of objectivity that lets them give a book that they thought had obvious flaws five stars, but it also comes from a judgemental attitude that I think will inevitably permeate to other aspects of life.  If I start a book loving it, but don't love the ending then I may feel betrayed or even angry towards that book. My initial impressions were clearly deceptions from that nefarious author! I would possibly get so mad that I would want that book to be punished for deceiving me so, or even to cut that book out of my life entirely. Or maybe I meet a book and I don't like that book already but I read it anyway and as I read it I look for anything that will confirm my pre-established hatred of this book. In either case I then angrily go onto the internet and give it one star, and then I write a bunch of good stuff about it so people will see how silly I am. I am not saying it is wrong to give a book one or five stars, but I am saying that you are ridiculous if you only give books one or five stars.

I think its become fairly obvious at this juncture that I am suggesting that the way we treat books is the same way we treat people. Our attitudes often extend to all parts of our lives and what is the prevalent attitude of people on the internet?  Blogs and Vlogs both seem to commonly be dedicated to pointing out why things suck, comments sections are notorious for being abusive, angry places dedicated to trashing whatever is being commented on, and facebook conversations devolve into ad homonyms incredibly quickly. I think that we look at people as walking merchandise that we are dying to review and give that dreaded one star to. I'm not saying everyone on the internet is angry and mean but I do think it has become a culture that views judgement and superiority as the chief virtues and compassion and understanding as outdated sentiments. I am sure that the people who act this way are probably a minority and that they themselves may have many positive qualities that just do not become apparent in this medium, but I am concerned about a world where we get so angry over media that we don't like. I am also concerned about how we treat those who disagree with us. Chiefly, I am concerned that we will be willing to view people as wretched simply because we didn't like one aspect of them.