November 25, 2003
The Effect of Popular Opinion... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes".
When we're not throwing caution to the wind, we tend to seek guidance from those who have gone before us. For any quest we have in mind, nothing is so helpful as someone we know and trust, who's been there and done that. But this doesn't tell me why it is so darn important to get the universally best opinion when we want to find a new place to go to dinner, or decide on a movie, or select a book.
I've been cogitating on the recent trend to disparage professional critics and laud the ability of the Internet to poll popular opinion. Frankly, I'm coming up blank. While the Internet can poll thousands of people, why is it being so heavily touted?
Mostly, I understand, this is to reject the opinions of critics who are apparently so wrong so much of the time. But if I don't agree with the opinion of a professional critic who is prepared to state in public both his credentials and his opinion, why am I better informed by a group of uncredentialled strangers?
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I'm not suggesting that we blindly follow the currently-although-always-tenuously-employed critics. My question is: Could these extensive Internet polls of movies and plays and whatever actually offer any better advice? Go out to any online restaurant guide, and read what people have to say.
There's no doubt that a romantic dinner with the right person enhances the take-away experience beyond all reality. Similarly, having a compulsory meal with someone you'd rather not eat with, much less have to pay restaurant prices to see, brings out time-honored critical traditions akin to pointing out grammatical flaws in the Sermon on the Mount.
The old saw goes: When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it. The unspoken part about "why" includes the credentials and experience of the person who is offering the opinion. And now the new saw says: We know that the critic's opinion is wrong, but we can certainly trust the collective opinion of "us."
If you've ever been to a PTA meeting you'd realize how many different opinions there can actually be on the simplest issue.
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There are lessons here that I had thought we already learned. The first was popularized by Alvin Toffler, when he wrote about the "massification" of goods and services, which largely came about post-World War II in the form of supermarkets, chains and product brands. This rose to a polished turn with the co-evolution of nationwide television and ubiquitous fast food franchises.
From where I stand, these massive Internet-based public opinion polls of consumer tastes - by consumers, and ostensibly for consumers - are simply the massification of public opinion. And yet what we are seeking, in this Age of the Internet, is not what everyone has, but rather that which is unique and precious to us as individuals.
Which leads to another concern. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle gets applied in various ways these days from science to relationships, but it clearly states that when we observe something - anything - we change it. And that's with one observer. Group observation destroys rampantly.
That means, in the case of restaurants, we're inviting the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to destroy that which we're so interested in finding in the first place. We all know that the test is not whether the restaurant remains in business, but whether the experience remains the same.
There's something to be said for simply listing the basic facts, and keeping our opinions to ourselves.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
