I have a hack that works extremely well: I read mostly bad reviews, specifically two-star ratings.
We all know that one- and five-star reviews are useless; those are just crackpots and bots. Three stars are for cowards, obviously; if you can’t be bothered to have a courageous opinion, I can’t be bothered to read it. And four stars are for liberal arts majors who had a three-star experience but grew up with grade inflation.
But a two-star review, that’s a thing of beauty. Somebody who goes through the trouble of logging into an app and typing full sentences on a keyboard to give a place exactly two stars has a story to tell. Most likely, they’re for-real mad but not so mad they forget that they live by a code. A person who selects the snake-eyes of ratings is seething about something but feels honor-bound to give credit where credit is due. That’s the stuff.
