If I didn’t rate it, did it actually even happen?
I recently stopped rating the books I finish on Goodreads. I’d started planning each rating in my head while I was still reading a book, even before I’d made it halfway through. If I give this popstar’s memoir 5 stars, will people think I’m dumb? How can I give the beach read I really enjoyed 4 stars when that’s how many I gave the epic, multigenerational classic I struggled to get through but appreciated all the same? How am I supposed to sum up all the nuanced things that a book brought to my life within 5 little stars? Are all of my life experiences really that linear, as rating systems would have me believe? And why does anyone really even need to know what I feel anyways?
I began to rethink sharing my opinion about the books I was reading, and in turn why I should be giving my opinion on anything at all, after I’d read other people’s reviews for a book I’d just bought, before I even started reading it. Yes, avoiding wasted time reading something that people have agreed is terrible is probably a good thing. But this book was by an author I liked. It was on a topic that sounded interesting to me. Yet thousands of strangers on the internet had rated it an average of 3.9 stars. Because other people decided it was under 4 stars, I started to question it’s worthiness. I ended up reading the book anyways (because I had already paid for it and am cheapo), but couldn’t get other people’s reviews out of my head. Oh, Lisa said that the main character was flat and annoying, and you know what, now that she mentions it, maybe she is kind of whiny! Maybe my interpretation of the protagonist’s actions was actually, factually wrong. When I finished, I couldn’t decide if I should give it 4 stars or 3 stars. 4, because I liked it. 3, because, maybe I was wrong?
Nowadays everyone is required to have an opinion about everything. But what if I don’t have an opinion? Or, rather, what if I can’t narrow down my experience into any singular judgment? Why do we feel obligated to broadcast our feelings on everything? Do I need to adopt other people’s opinions as the better alternative to having no opinion at all? Being forced to share my opinion about everything, being forced to summarize my experiences into miniature 1-dimensional scales is taking the enjoyment out of so many simple things in my life. In reality, my world is not black-and-white. Nothing is perfectly wrong or perfectly right, and that’s what makes my life interesting.
Rating everything puts my personal likes out there for strangers to disagree with, to tell me I’m wrong. When I’ve liked something, I must question if I’ve liked the right thing. If I’ve made a personal judgment on something, I must question if I’ve judged it correctly. I now have to compare my opinion with other people’s opinions. Books, for one, but also average restaurants I like to order from on weeknights, games I play on my phone to waste time, perfectly fine uber drivers. Why must I critique every aspect of my life?
I believe that all of this rating and reviewing is validation for many people. Giving their opinion makes them feel important. They want to be heard. They may have been asked for their opinion by a ‘Rate Us! popup’. The internet gives them access to the world’s ears, and they want everyone to listen. Maybe putting their opinion out there somehow makes them feel valuable, like an expert when they’re not. A person who opines on something has control over the thing being opined on, but when did it become a good thing to be inconsequentially ‘powerful’? And when did everyone become experts on everything? Of course, sometimes I seek out the opinions of people that I respect, and it carries actual value for me. Notice here that I sought out these opinions. I wanted their point of view because they were a) informed experts on a topic (e.g. book reviews by a respected author), or b) because I know them personally and value their view on the world (e.g. my best friend knows me well enough to know I’d like the book she just read). Why should I be putting any consideration into if someone I know nothing about thinks I’ll like a book?
Aside from all of the companies/creatives/apps that are basically begging for us to give them some stars, people love to shout their opinions about anything and everything on social media anyways, especially when I didn’t ask for it. (side note – maybe I should just stop following people on the internet who do this…) Sometimes political or polarized topics that I actually do have an opinion on, but also most of the time on things that no one needs or wants their thoughts on. We used to share our opinions with our closest friends, and now we share them with everyone. Shelly didn’t like the new Spiderman movie because Zendaya was taller than Spiderman. I better not go see it now. Bob didn’t like the Italian restaurant he went to because [insert ten paragraph restaurant review], only come to find out it was an Olive Garden so no shit the spaghetti was a little soggy. Should I care though, really, because the breadsticks still taste amazeballs to me!? Jessica says I shouldn’t get vaccinated because her pastor told her God would save us. I don’t go to your church anymore specifically because I DON’T WANT YOUR PASTOR’S NON-SCIENTIFIC OPINION ON SOMETHING THAT IS A FACT.
Opinions are personal views on the world, but it seems that we’ve begun attaching more value to them, as if opinions could be facts if you just shout them loud enough and find enough other people who have the same opinion. And for me, this is where the issue lies. People are blurring the line between opinions and facts, when they are objectively different. I’d begun to blur the lines myself, and started to believe that the stars I was looking at were immutable numbers that I must feel the same way about. But facts are facts, things which cannot change no matter what you feel about them. Opinions are NOT facts, and they never will be. Stars are just a made up system, attempting to force the subjective complexities of what makes my life ‘good’ into a miniscule, one-dimensional scale. It is a fact that the acceleration of gravity is immutably about 9.8 meters per second per second. It’s the same for everyone. But what you think about that book is not, in fact, what everyone else will think about that book. A book cannot be inherently 3.9 stars. That’s just like, your opinion, man.
It sometimes feels like opinions have become our identities, and without an opinion, we are nothing. If I didn’t rate it, did it actually even happen? But people change, and so can opinions. Maybe everyone keeps pushing theirs because they want to convince you, or themselves, that their worldview is true, that it’s right. That it’s a fact. Maybe they need to convince themselves that they matter by proving that their opinion is unchangeable. Maybe it gives them a sense of realness. It’s tactile to record that you read a book and liked it 5 stars worth. Or 1000 thumbs up worth. Or -510.2 snowflakes worth. It’s all the same. But it’s not my responsibility to listen. It’s not my responsibility to validate anyone else. I don’t want your opinion. I don’t owe you mine.
It's not you, co. 