February 14, 2004
WHAT A FLOCK OF SHUT-INS:
Glitch unmasks book 'reviewers' at Amazon.com (AMY HARMON, 2/14/04, New York Times)
Close observers of Amazon.com noticed something peculiar this week: The company's Canadian site had suddenly revealed the identities of thousands of people who had anonymously posted book reviews on the U.S. site under signatures like "a reader from New York."The weeklong glitch, which Amazon fixed after outed reviewers complained, provided a rare glimpse at how writers and readers are wielding the online reviews as a tool to promote or pan a book -- when they think no one is watching. [...]
But even with reviewer privacy restored, many people say Amazon's pages have turned into what one writer called "a rhetorical war," where friends and family members are regularly corralled to write glowing reviews and each negative one is scrutinized for the digital fingerprints of known enemies.
One well-known writer admitted privately -- and somewhat gleefully -- to anonymously criticizing a more prominent novelist who he felt had unfairly reaped critical praise for years. She regularly posts responses, or at least he thinks it is her, but the elegant rebuttals of his reviews are also written from behind a pseudonym.
We once got an e-mail informing us that there was a clandestine effort to have the Brothers Judd reviews removed from Amazon because we were in reality a Dartmouth fraternity house with dozens of brothers posting. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 14, 2004 6:07 PM
Impossible. A Dartmouth fraternity couldn't have produced so many reviews.
Posted by: pj at February 14, 2004 10:17 PMNor as much knowledge, I suspect.
Posted by: John Barrett, Jr. at February 14, 2004 10:55 PMI can't imagine OJ as a frat boy.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at February 15, 2004 12:34 AMOn the other hand, he does sometimes write as if he were drunk.
Posted by: h-man at February 15, 2004 4:50 AMMr. Duquette -
OJ once posted a photo of himself (taken during his Dartmouth days) with some impossibly ridiculous haircut, the result of a lost wager IIRC. Sure looks like frat material to me!
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at February 15, 2004 8:24 AMOrrin:
Were you a Dartmouth or Colgate man? Which one expelled you?
Posted by: Peter B at February 15, 2004 8:38 AMColgate undergrad. Vermont Law School, where I met the wife who was working at Dartmouth. She's now at Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital and I'm her Cabana Boy.
Posted by: oj at February 15, 2004 9:28 AMHere's the photo and it was Foos's fault. He got Final Four tickets and I told him I'd only go if Cuse made it. He said if he was expected to wait and see instead of asking someone else I had to get a Bos haircut and dye it blue and orange:
http://www.brothersjudd.com/webpage/ojcusehead.jpeg
Posted by: oj at February 15, 2004 9:32 AM
You look like you should be singing with Joe Strummer and Mick Jones on the Sandinista albumn.
Posted by: pchuck at February 15, 2004 10:52 AMThe haircut's fine,but that shirt..............
Posted by: M at February 15, 2004 11:45 AMYou can't imagine the horror on the flight attendant's face when, shortly after our flight to New Orleans (and the Final Four) took off, OJ removed his throwback Washington Senators hat to reveal his orange and blue 'do.
Of course, those were the days of comfortable air travel: OJ's carry-on bag contained 2 sub sandwiches and a six pack of beer.)
Posted by: Foos at February 15, 2004 12:16 PMNow I'm really scared! Maybe it's the beer, but you've got that UNABomber type glean in your eyes.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at February 15, 2004 12:32 PM