In light of various… interesting review comment threads that I’ve seen lately (this one, for instance), I thought the time right to revisit and extend a post from last year. These are all responses (or variations thereon) that I’ve seen to negative reviews, and they’re all ways of trying to dismiss criticism rather than actually having to engage with it. Can you score a full house?
| It’s just your opinion. | You are jealous of the author. | What are your qualifications? | You are over-qualified to review this book. | You don’t understand the genre. |
| You don’t appreciate how much time and effort the author put in. | You make unreasonable demands of the book. | How many novels have you written? | I don’t care about good writing; I just want to be entertained. | You want to appear smarter than you are. |
| You don’t know good books. | You have a vendetta. | BONUS SQUARE: Reviewer addressed as ‘Mr.’ or ‘Ms.’ | You are just trying to prove that you are cleverer than the author. | You are being deliberately contrarian to satisfy your ego. |
| You should be grateful to the author for having written the book. | You really need to have read the other books in the series. | But what about all these positive comments? | If you had read the book properly, you would see that… | You shouldn’t be critical. |
| The minor factual inaccuracies/typos in your review invalidate your argument. | You are overthinking. | The book is too clever for you. | Arguments from “evidence” are pointless. | Who reviews the reviewers? |
15th January 2012 at 6:04 pm
Haha I kinda wish I got argumentative comments just so that I could use this. Maybe I should play it whilst going round other blogs.
16th January 2012 at 1:23 pm
I kinda wish I got argumentative comments just so that I could use this.
So do I… almost. But on balance I’m glad that I don’t. 🙂
16th January 2012 at 10:05 pm
LOL! There do seem to be an increasing level of posts scoring highly in this type of bingo.I wonder if it is just because twitter is making me more aware of them, or if people are becoming increasingly snarky?