I was listening to Upgrade, one of my fave tech podcasts this week, and they were talking about reviews. Specifically, they were discussing ‘the controversy’ over Marques Brownlee’s takedown of the Humane AI pin, which was brutal. I know of Brownlee, although I don’t follow him. And I’ve seen a few posts about that pin, which was very Weapons of Choice in the way it was supposed to work, shooting lasers from a chest badge onto your hand or some surface in front of you, or something.
But apparently, it’s a bit of a dud, and Brownlee called it as such.
As I said, I don’t follow him, but I’ve heard of him and I understand he’s one of the best tech reviewers currently working. You can trust his stuff, which is more than you can say for 99% of online reviews of anything these days. That system is broken.
The Upgrade boys weren’t discussing his review, however, as much as the reaction to it. Brownlee got criticised for dissing the Humane pin, precisely because he is so trusted that his, er, critics said he destroyed the product by writing about it as harshly as he did. Or tubing about it, I guess, since he’s mostly on YouTube.
His reply was succinct. “I think we disagree about the nature of my job.”
Indeed.
I decided a long time ago not to write reviews of books or movies or of anything really that I didn’t like. I know how much effort goes into creating something, and even if it's a dud, I don’t want to shit on that for the sake of clicks. Better for me, at least, just to say nothing.
But I think Brownlee and reviewers like him are doing the Lord’s work, letting us know what’s good and what’s not. The stuff they review is often backed by giant corporations and sold with multimillion-dollar marketing budgets. It sometimes costs hundreds or thousands of dollars to buy. They’re not dealing with artists in garrets.
There’s also a binary element involved. If a piece of tech is designed to solve a problem, then it either solves that problem, or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, or it doesn’t do it well enough to justify the price, I’d like to know.