A no messing around guide to the coolest things to eat, drink and do in Vancouver and beyond. Community. Not clickbait.

Smoke Break #872: New Blog “Fuck You Yelper” Calls Out The Dark Side Of Web 2.0

The schadenfreuders and business owners of every stripe will get a kick out of Fuck You Yelper, the new Tumblr that pulls real quotes from the review site Yelp’s sizable moron faction and re-publishes them as the nonsensical non sequiturs that they so often are. Of course, picking on Yelpers and DineHere types is sort of cruel, not unlike poking fun of the permanently deranged, but that doesn’t make it any less tasty. Empathise with their manifesto…

I used to love Yelp. I remember when the Web 2.0 site meant that I could indulge my obsession with finding local gems. You know what I’m talking about…the type of place that you drive by every week and always wonder if it’s any good (it is). Crowdsourced reviews meant I could trust my neighbor to tell me what was good without ever having to actually talk to them. What? I’m shy.

Then something happened, people became assholes. Blame Food Network, Top Chef, or even American Idol. Going out to eat no longer meant checking out a new cuisine, culture, or neighborhood. Our newly formed Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives culture means the masses expect every dining experience to be unique and mindblowing; we expect to be floored with delight and convulse with adoration. Fuck local business if they don’t bend backwards for our hard-earned dollar…it’s a goddamn recession and we expect to be entertained.

Somewhere along this process we forgot that these local businesses are what make up the concept of a community. A beer at our bar on a Thursday night, a slice of pizza with the softball team, dishing about crazy girlfriends at the barber shop these experiences are a cornerstone of what brings people together. Local businesses are owned by people just like you and they make a living by providing for the community around them.

The problem is some people just don’t really give a shit. They don’t care that somebody owns a business that they pour their heart/soul into, and just how much it costs to run a business.

Instead what they care about is that somebody gave them a funny look while they were waiting in line and that Rebecca Black’s Friday was playing on the radio. One-star.

They go to a bar order a beer they’ve never tried and don’t like it. One-star. Well, the bartender was cute though…two-stars.

The untold story of Yelp is that the business owner has no recourse against these types of reviews. Yelp will occasionally remove a falsified review, based on the subjective opinion of somebody working at Yelp HQ. Even owner comments that you see under a review must be approved by Yelp, and only in response to a false claim. Bottom-line: Yelp is not built to encourage fulfilling owner-customer relationships. Quite the opposite.

In any case…that’s just my opinion. No, I’m not a local business owner. I’m just a guy who really loves the concept of neighborhoods and localism. But whatever, haters gonna hate right?

Word.

TAKE ANOTHER SMOKE BREAK

There are 3 comments

  1. I only wish they linked the yelpers to these retarded comments they’re leaving… so we could stay away from them if we see them on the streets. I don’t want to be infected with stupidity or ignorance. D:

  2. I cannot understand the way Yelp works. Some businesses have only good responses “filtered” and other only the bad. Is there some kind of payoff system we don’t get? We have run restaurants for two decades and the whole environment has changed. Word of mouth advertising was what you relied on and if you did your best for people you were rewarded with more customers. Now only the super happy customers (or lets face it, friends) and the cranky people and self appointed food critics are the ones everyone relies on. The majority of your customers never post. They’re happy to be there and that’s it. This whole posting bulls**it is out of hand and getting worse. Some people come to the restaurant and never talk to each other. They constantly text other people and take pictures of every spoonful they are about to eat and then they comment on Yelp or other sites. Do they really enjoy going out or even connect with each other? I sincerely doubt it.

Proud Backyard Chef Shows Off Outstanding DIY Barbecue Set-Up

From his waterwheel-powered rotisserie to his four-storey filing cabinet full of spuds and corn, this guy is killing it.

This Might Be the Strangest TV Ad Ever Made for a Candy Bar

Everybody keeps secrets, even from their loved ones. This advertisement takes that theme to a bizarre extreme.

How Stainless Steel Knives, Forks and Spoons Are Made

From grinding serrations to spoon bowls, this short video details how our everyday eating implements are made.

Short Film Uses Beauty of International Banknotes to Tell Strange Story of Money

Corrie Francis Parks animates pieces of paper currency and grains of sand to create a visual poem on global economics.