There are some colorful sayings about opinions and few of them paint a pleasant picture. But everyone indeed has an opinion and they’re not always going to be good or valid or agreeable. When these opinions are presented as reviews, whether for books, or restaurants, or products, they can color other people’s perceptions and maybe even affect the livelihood of the person behind what is being reviewed. And that’s why some people can have very odd reactions to getting poorly reviewed.
10. Michael Crichton Made a Critic Into a Child Molester in One of His Books
Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Sphere, and many other popular books that were adapted into films. He was one of the most well-known writers in America and has had a lasting impact. None of that means he wasn’t as petty as hell.
Michael Crowley was a writer for New Republic who had criticized Crichton’s writing in a dramatic enough way to get Crichton’s attention. The author didn’t respond to Crowley directly, instead, he wrote the novel Next.
In the book, there’s a character named Mick Crowley who is fairly vividly described as a child molester with explicitly small genitals. There are plenty of factors that real-life Crowley says indicate it was supposed to be based on him. It was the most childish thing Crichton could have done, arguably. The real-life Crowley, however, said he was rather flattered to be included at all. In his mind, if Crichton had to stoop so low, then his own criticism had been valid in the first place.
9. People Think Negative Reviews Are Considered More Intelligent
When you’re scrolling through reviews on Amazon, Yelp, or Rotten Tomatoes, which ones do you think are more trustworthy and intelligent? Do you give more weight to a positive review or a negative review?
Research suggests most people give more credence to the negative. Even if we think of a negative reviewer as a worse person overall, more people believe that writers of negative reviews are more intelligent and more of an expert.
Negative reviews are more influential in our buying decisions than positive ones. Part of this is because products and services tend to have more positive reviews so bad ones seem more rare and that makes them more valuable in our minds. It’s a real paradox when you think about it. A movie could have 99 positive reviews but we’ll go out of our way to read the one bad review because it now holds more value than those 99 positives.
Additionally, there is evidence that a huge number of reviews on sites like Amazon are fake, as much as 43%, and that makes people more inclined to believe negative than positive because they’re seen as more trustworthy.
8. Conan O’Brien Wrote His Own Negative Review of His Show in 1993
Conan O’Brien is a titan of the late night comedy scene and his shows are now considered some of the funniest in late night history. He was obviously not without problems, though, from being pushed out of his Tonight Show gig to proving himself in the first place way back in the 1990s.
When Conan debuted Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 1993, he was not well known at all and the reviews were not very good. But O’Brien, for all of his self-deprecating humor, is also a smart guy and very savvy about playing to his strengths. When the writing was on the wall about his debut, he put pen to paper and wrote his own negative review to cut the critics off at the pass.
The show premiered on September 13th, 1993. In that same day’s edition of the New York Times, O’Brien wrote a piece called “O’Brien Flops” as though he were a viewer of his own show and picked apart everything that was wrong with him as a host and the show in general, though the whole thing was embellished with outlandish and false details.
7. Tom Arnold and Roseanne Sent Vulgar Letters to Critics
Tom Arnold and Roseanne Barr were never known for their tact back in the 1990s or even today for that matter. While Arnold has matured quite a bit in his old age, Roseanne is still known to make bold and hard-to-ignore statements in public that rub people the wrong way. The two of them perfected this as a couple when they sent vulgarity-laden faxes to critics of Arnold’s spinoff “The Jackie Thomas Show” which you may or may not remember.
The couple sent three faxes to critics that had been especially harsh and included anti-gay slurs directed at one critic and other personal attacks. Roseanne claimed she had written them because each of the critics had done the same thing to her, attacking her for her appearance and other personal things rather than the content of the show, so she felt she was justified.
6. A Bookstore Owner Tried to Break Into the House of a Yelper Reviewer
One of the more stunning cases of taking negative reviews too far comes from San Francisco where a Yelper criticized a local bookstore. The store owner did not take kindly to the review and tracked the reviewer down, showing up at the man’s house. She tried to force her way in and the man had to call the police to come and arrest her.
The reviewer claimed, in a two-star review, that the store was a mess. The owner then replied with a classic “Say it to my face.” She went on to claim she had personal issues, couldn’t afford a cleaner, and claimed he hurt her and did nothing to make the situation better himself. This degraded into worse insults over time.
After her arrest, the shop owner claimed it was a misunderstanding, and she only showed up at the man’s house to apologize for her hostile messages. Later, the reviewer said that he was not interested in pursuing charges against the owner since she’d left him alone in the aftermath of the arrest.
5. Sony Invented a Fake Critic to Review Bad Movies
The economics of movies are pretty crazy and sometimes a movie can cost $100 million but need to make $300 million or more to be a success and none of us understand it. But for studios, there’s clearly a lot at stake and they need popular, successful movies. Critics can help make that happen if they love a movie, or they can destroy a film’s chances with bad reviews. So what’s a studio to do if they want an edge?
If you’re Sony, you make up fake critics to give your bad movies good reviews so that they don’t look so bad anymore. David Manning was Sony’s fictional critic, who worked for the Ridgefield Press in Connecticut. He loved Hollow Man and Rob Schneider’s The Animal and more. He loved every Sony film and Sony used his quotes in their ads.
Manning was made up by a Sony ad executive. His reviews were only noticed when other critics started seeing irregularities in his work, like how he’d reviewed some movies before critics had screenings. That and the fact no one had ever met him.
4. Leonard Maltin Poorly Reviewed Gremlins One So The Director Killed Him in Part Two
There’s a scene in Gremlins 2 in which film critic Leonard Maltin is reviewing the home video release of the first Gremlins and he gets attacked on set by actual gremlins. It’s a fun bit of meta-humor in a movie that was super weird from top to bottom. This scene didn’t come out of nowhere, however.
In 1984, Maltin reviewed the first Gremlins and called it “icky and gross.” He didn’t like it, in other words. And in 1984, Maltin was a big critic. His reviews were on Entertainment Tonight, so this was widely seen.
Director Joe Dante didn’t take issue with it the way you’d expect, though. He invited Maltin to do a cameo in part two and just killed the man on screen.
3. Rockstar Paid to Publish Bad Reviews of Grand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto is one of the most popular game franchises in history right now so it’s hard to imagine it ever would have needed to force some publicity somehow, but it did. The games have always been a little controversial so, if they didn’t have that level of popularity, you can imagine it might be an uphill battle for them.
The original GTA was a top-down shooter game and had no fanbase so when it debuted, it needed help. The designers decided to generate some buzz by paying for bad reviews. The idea was that the reviews would point out all the controversial things, which gamers would recognize as awesome things, and make sure they were published in places where they would act as rage bait for people who already hated games. It worked like a charm, too.
2. Richard Brittain Tracked Down a Negative Reviewer and Attacked Her With a Wine Bottle
Writers can be emotional people, especially when it comes to their own work. No one wants to think they wrote a stinker of a novel and they really don’t want to hear someone tell them they wrote hot garbage. That’s why it’s best to never read your own reviews. But Richard Brittain never got that memo.
In 2014, Brittain had uploaded part of a novel he was writing to Wattpad. This is explicitly done so other people can read it and maybe offer their opinions. Nonetheless, an 18-year-old girl read Brittain’s work and didn’t like it.
So 28-year-old Brittain looked up the girl on Facebook and, through her profile, could figure out where she worked. He then drove 400 miles from his home to her workplace, which was a supermarket. Once there, he went to the alcohol section, got a wine bottle, then found her in the store and beat her over the head with it.
The girl was knocked out and Brittain was arrested and then jailed for two and a half years.
1. David Merrick Hired People With the Same Names as Prominent Critics to Review His Play
David Merrick was some kind of negative reviewing twisting artisan. His plan to overcome bad reviews, while as shady as a willow tree, was also remarkably creative and industrious. The effort he put in can’t be oversold, either. He made this idea work.
Merrick was a Broadway producer in the 1960s and he wasn’t necessarily making the best of the best in terms of Broadway. His plays were sometimes what you might call duds, and he wasn’t always getting the kind of reviews you want as a producer. In 1961, his show Subways Are For Sleeping was raked over the coals by all the big-name theater critics and it was expected that the show would shut down as a result.
Merrick then hatched a scheme as oddly brilliant as it was ridiculous. He was at the mercy of seven critics in particular, so he hunted down seven men who had the exact same names. He took those men to dinner; he bought them drinks, took them to his show, and they had a great night on the town and all they had to do in exchange was let Merrick quote them about their night in the paper.
One paper spotted the scam before it went to print and all but one stopped it before it went out, but the story itself became so big that Merrick’s show started drawing big numbers and ended as a success rather than a failure.