Skip to main content

Go the Same Way, or Go the Wrong Way

Go the Same Way, or Go the Wrong Way

With the “Yelpification” of culture, there is increasing strength in numbers.
Stockbyte, via Getty Images
Not long ago, a friend of mine, a dear man with exquisite taste, took me to dinner at Momofuku Má Pêche in Midtown Manhattan. I point out his taste because, being from out of town, he chose the restaurant on the fly, based on some reviews he had read on Yelp, the social networking site that rates everything from eating establishments to vacuum cleaners to gastroenterologists. The supertrendy place had gotten some raves.Now, if I had the same experience with a gastroenterologist I had chosen based on glowing Yelp evaluations as I did at Momofuku, I would be checking myself into the emergency room. My monkfish — a special favorite of the Yelp hordes — tasted like a pencil eraser. It was also so cold that it could not be described as cooked. It was deceased. As for the destination-place atmosphere, imagine the decibel level of a Justin Bieber concert as filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. The service was haute rude. Our waitress responded to my timid questions about the oysters with a pseudopopulist arrogance that implied I was both hopelessly out of touch with the everyday experience of fishermen and boat owners, and too much a rube to comprehend the subtle distinctions of taste and class that characterized the world of the fancy shellfish. And those fake proletarian desserts! “Compost cookie.” “Cereal milk.” “Crack pie.” The idea, I suppose, is that if you eat such downwardly mobile treats, it is only because you are so confident of your upwardly mobile status. Yet the fact is that the crowd of Yelp reviewers had decided that Momofuku was the place to eat. And so we found ourselves eating at Momofuku.For the pop sociologists of the period after World War II, “crowd” was a scare word, an impersonal entity that would extinguish your personality, spew contempt at your uniqueness, disable the operation of your individual instincts and judgment. Now the “wisdom of crowds” has become an accepted platitude. “Peer pressure,” far from being a pernicious influence, is something we seek out as we race from one review site to another. You might call this the Yelpification of culture. The goal and appeal of Yelp, and of countless similar companies, is to make everyone, regardless of income or social status, feel like a teenager trying to get into an exclusive private school that evening. Heaven forbid that you should meet one of your friends at your favorite Thai place. No, you have to meet at everyone’s favorite Thai place. Because if your friend is like some of my friends, he or she will be Yelping the place you suggest, and you’re in big trouble if your favorite Thai restaurant has — unbeknown to you, who have been going there for 27 years — the status of the Ebola virus among savvy restaurant-goers. (“This place should be BYOT — Bring your own turmeric! Stay away!! Yuck!!!”) No, you have to go to a place that has received the best reviews from lots of people, even if you have no idea who they are or what their motives might be for spending their time rating restaurants. Gone are the days when “conformist” was a slur on someone’s character. Now the idea is that if you are not following the crowd of five-star dispensers, you are a tasteless, undiscriminating shlub. Welcome to the lonely crowd of the 21st century, both a revival of and a variation on the original “lonely crowd,” a term famously coined by the sociologist David Riesman in his best-selling 1950 book of that name. Riesman argued that as the economy turned producers who manufacture goods into consumers buying them, the nature of society changed. People went from being “inner-directed’ to being “outer-directed,” from heeding their own instincts and judgment to depending on the judgments and opinions of tastemakers and trendsetters. Having lost touch with themselves, outer-directed souls were all alone in the midst of other people.Of course, in one important respect, Riesman’s thesis has been radically refuted. Whereas he and other postwar intellectuals feared the conformist power of the crowd, we now fear the aberrant individual or individuals lurking in the crowd. The tragedy in Boston makes the postwar worries about mass society, inflamed by the perceived Communist threat at the time, seem trivial. But in other respects, Riesman’s insights seem like the seeds of our own time. Thanks to the Internet, we have become both producers and consumers. We are, in the futurist (how old-fashioned the term “futurist” seems now) Alvin Toffler’s unlovely phrase, “prosumers.” We tweet, and post, and update, and blog at the same time we are consuming other people’s digital productions. We are all part of a vast crowd that is unaware of how atomized it is, ignorant of the fact that it is both interconnected and isolated at the same time. The social media response to the Boston bombings was, all at once, informative, misleading and disorienting. Manipulating our iGadgets, we have the illusion of going our own way even as we make sure to follow everyone else. “Following” is now the hallmark of a triumphant individuality. The Internet prizes the cute angle, the startling factoid, the arch provocation, qualities that are actually the careful, calculated style of the other-directed person cannily hiding behind an inner-directed facade. We are all, in Riesman’s Runyonesque parlance, “inside-dopesters.” According to Riesman, the aim of the inside-dopester is “never to be taken in by any person, cause or event.” The acquisition and preservation of such knowingness is the essential principle of the Twitterverse. It is certainly the sole purpose of Yelp and its ilk, where we can be reassured that by obeying the crowd, we will never be taken in by any restaurant, gastroenterologist or vacuum cleaner.In an information-saturated world, we need all the information we can get about all the information we are receiving. In a society more and more dominated by commerce, we need businesses that guide us toward the right commercial choices. But one effect of this ocean of meta-commentary and meta-evaluation is to professionalize our leisure time. We are now in the midst of a national attempt to maximize leisure time the way Americans once joined together to beat the Russians to the moon. Quality time used to mean time away from the pressures of work or ambition. Now it means exactly the opposite: time spent working on getting the most and the best in just about every category of existence. Another effect is, to my mind, the worst. Thanks to our constantly digitized lonely crowd, we are as keenly aware of other people’s opinions and judgments as we were in high school. But we are aware of their opinions and judgments without ever getting to know them as personalities.The centuries-old idea that taste is subjective has been replaced by the conviction that, as in elections, sheer numbers carry the day. As a result, we may well start to become as cynical about our social lives as we are about our politics.And that would be a real one-star experience, as I’m sure everyone will agree.

Popular posts from this blog

Study Abroad USA, College of Charleston, Popular Courses, Alumni

Thinking for Study Abroad USA. School of Charleston, the wonderful grounds is situated in the actual middle of a verifiable city - Charleston. Get snatched up by the wonderful and customary engineering, beautiful pathways, or look at the advanced steel and glass building which houses the School of Business. The grounds additionally gives students simple admittance to a few major tech organizations like Amazon's CreateSpace, Google, TwitPic, and so on. The school offers students nearby as well as off-grounds convenience going from completely outfitted home lobbies to memorable homes. It is prepared to offer different types of assistance and facilities like clubs, associations, sporting exercises, support administrations, etc. To put it plainly, the school grounds is rising with energy and there will never be a dull second for students at the College of Charleston. Concentrate on Abroad USA is improving and remunerating for your future. The energetic grounds likewise houses various

Best MBA Online Colleges in the USA

“Opportunities never open, instead we create them for us”. Beginning with this amazing saying, let’s unbox today’s knowledge. Love Business and marketing? Want to make a high-paid career in business administration? Well, if yes, then mate, we have got you something amazing to do!   We all imagine an effortless future with a cozy house and a laptop. Well, well! You can make this happen. Today, with this guide, we will be exploring some of the top-notch online MBA universities and institutes in the USA. Let’s get started! Why learn Online MBA from the USA? Access to More Options This online era has given a second chance to children who want to reflect on their careers while managing their hectic schedules. In this, the internet has played a very crucial in rejuvenating schools, institutes, and colleges to give the best education to students across the globe. Graduating with Less Debt Regular classes from high reputed institutes often charge heavy tuition fees. However onl

Sickening moment maskless 'Karen' COUGHS in the face of grocery store customer, then claims she doesn't have to wear a mask because she 'isn't sick'

A woman was captured on camera following a customer through a supermarket as she coughs on her after claiming she does not need a mask because she is not sick.  Video of the incident, which has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on Twitter alone, allegedly took place in a Su per Saver in Lincoln, Nebraska according to Twitter user @davenewworld_2. In it, an unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of the customer recording her. Scroll down for video An unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of a woman recording her A woman was captured on camera following a customer as she coughs on her in a supermarket without a mask on claiming she does not need one because she is not sick @chaiteabugz #karen #covid #karens #karensgonewild #karensalert #masks we were just wearing a mask at the store. ¿ o