Romasuave's 100th Review Write-Off Jul 23 '05    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Office Supplies Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator From $90 Fellowes Bankers Box Literature Sorter From $14 The Bottom Line I enjoyed this write-off a lot. This is my entry into Romasuave's My Own Personal Epinions Write-Off in honour of his 100th review. If you would like to join, then drop him a comment and answer the questionaire. Member Name and meaning behind it (if there is one) Oh that's easy- describing myself as a 'sad git' was my way of being self-depreciating and poking fun at myself about my fondness for Disco music and Doctor Who. At the time I was surprised that no-one else had chosen it. I had hoped that the name would be appropriate to my review style and that my reviews would incorporate a strong sense of humour to them. Somehow it wasn't to be, my reviews coming out were actually very serious and humourless and I sometimes worry that other reviewers have a picture in their mind about me being a very stiff and unsmiling uptight tosser who you can never have fun with (I hate people like that). Date I joined Epinions Well it says on my profile it was April 23rd, 2002, so that must be right. (I'm to take it this information is for the people too lazy to actually look at what it says on my profile) How I stumbled upon Epinions For some reason I've always enjoyed reading film and TV reviews of the things I've seen- whether I loved them or hated them. I just love nodding my head at their points and remembering my reactions to the film. I remember one of the first times I went online was in my first trip to an internet cafe where I was checking up reviews on "Batman Forever" which I'd just seen at the cinema. It must have been 1995, so I was 13 at the time.At 17 I used the internet more frequently as I was at college then and checked out the IMDB more often. I think I remember coming across Epinions when I was 19, back when reviews were separated into collums with favourable reviews on one side and unfavourable reviews on the other. I remember it appealing strongly to the part of me that was getting a little fed up of the reviews that followed convention and simply agreed on the views of others and Epinions reviewers seemed to give a more unique and personal take on their reviews, whilst keeping it professional, lengthy and thorough enough to be satisfying in a way that the Amazon reviews often weren't. It was late 2001 when we finally got an internet connection of our own. And sometime after I decided to take my steps towards reviewing on Epinions- I'd learned a lot about musical culture and film theory so I decided I was ready to play with the big boys. I really got a buzz out of Epinions back then because I was discovering a lot of websites on the internet and I was shocked to see such primal and demented vitriol, abuse, rage and hate spewed in flame wars on other websites. By contrast Epinions was so refreshing because the community was so encouraging and clean and good natured and people accepted my views even when they disagreed with me- it was a place I could feel comfortable in and settle into easily, Number of member visits 8,929 (aren't I popular, and aren't you a lazy git! That's probably why only a few of you leave comments) Number of total visits 32,849 (and it makes me laugh to think of all the mean-spirited scum on the site who've been blocked and will never ever have this many visits) My very first review (with link and description) As anyone who read Simply_Crispy's awards ceremony knows, my first review was on Doctor Who- the Dalek Invasion of Earth. One of the earliest Doctor Who serials (it's actually in Black and White- that's how old it is), and it's one of my favourites too, in which the Doctor and his companions land on earth in the near future to find the Dalek race have conquered Earth and enslaved most of its population. It's one of my favourite episodes because it was an ambitious story- full of danger and chaos and it allowed for a lot of emotional development and passion that wasn't common in the series. I think I could write a far better review on it now, but I prefer to leave it as it is as a frame of reference for my progress. At least I think it was my first review. There were some early reviews I deleted and redid, It might have been one of the Do Artists Have a Social Responsibility to Uphold pieces or Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle album or my other Doctor Who review- Genesis of the Daleks. The 3 favorite reviews that I've written (with links) Epinions reviews for me don't have much pay-off once they're posted. But once in a while I post something that I'm so amazed at and proud of that I would gladly print it out and frame it on my wall, and when that happens I'm usually on a high for the rest of the night. Raging Bull . Written back in 2004 when I was at my peak of review writing (I think I've gone downhill since). I think its my favourite review because it's sharply written, it is not too long a read, it joins dots with other types of film, and it doesn't overuse too many adjectives (my worst reviewing habit)- in short its my calmest read. Fight Club. As a reviewer it's one of my most personal pieces. It's almost a storytelling one about how I joined Epinions and what my life was like in that first Epinions year. I also think its my funniest review. Like my Raging Bull review I really wonder why none of the advisors gave me a single "Most Helpful" review for it. If I was advisor, I definitely would have. My last, most recent piece- a poem I wrote which encapsulates a lot of things I have learned recently about modern masculinity and how it affects our attitudes to war. I wrote it on the spot, free verse (I find using the rhyme scheme leads to very cheesy poems so I didn't use it here), and I'm really proud of how it gets its message across briefly but aiming straight to the jugular in how we get a kick out of euphemisms and eloquent 'greater good' justifications for the innocents killed in the crossfire. I intend at some point to write a long essay on the topic. My most complete review I often try to make my reviews into full course meals that cover everything I can. Other times I will quite deliberately contain and narrow the review to about four points, such as in my Videodrome and The Double Life of Veronique reviews, which I also like doing. There are some film reviews that are near complete in weverything they say but looking back there's still something missing, like my reviews on 2001: A Space Odyssey and Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks. Actually since my links are all there, you could take a look and make up your own mind. I'd say my most complete review would be my review on Leon The Professional (thank God Epinions finally got the title right, when I wrote it they called it Lion the Professional). I feel I looked at that film and its wide cross section audience from every angle and got it as perfect as the director did. My most successful Write-Off (If I wrote one, include link) I've never written a Write-Off. Perhaps I should one day- I could do an 80's write-off or a Doctor Who write-off. Favorite W/O I participated in (with link) Well I've always enjoyed Madtheory's annual Hip-Hop Appreciation Week Write-Off's. I think they encapsulate my best Hip Hop reviews, and since its the write-off I've contributed the most to, I'd say it probably must qualify as my favourite. Here's a link to my entry this year (links to my previous entries can be found within) Basically I enjoy writing anything that makes me sound like a smart*ss, and those reviews really make me sound like I have a well endowed brain. I must say I still love my old entry entry into Artemisadorned's Remember what you did at 17 (W/O), if only because it cheers me up to reflect on my life and realise that I had a good time, even when I had it hard. And finally I must credit three_ster for getting me to participate in his Food Lover's Write/Off. On the surface the idea never appealed to me and I wasn't going to take part until I recieved a personal email from Ryan coaxing me to join in. So I felt obliged to give it a go and then I actually really got into it and was surprised how much I enjoyed writing it and reflecting on all things delicious- it was a lot of fun. So here's the final product http://www.epinions.com/content_4376010884 My most lucrative review (with link and $$$ earned) As I expected, it is one of my earliest reviews- 2pac's Greatest Hits , and I got $5.06 for it. I got only 46 Epinions member views (and only 13 of them bothered to rate, and only one of them bothered to comment... grrrr.....), but nontheless I got a staggering 2854 views in total. I guess that says a lot about 2pac's popularity and about the current generation's insecurity with emotions and their way of gravitating to a figure like 2pac who made male emotions into something eloquent that could exist side by side with his more alpha male qualities. Close behind that is my review of the Star Wars Trilogy. Which garnered 401 visits and $3.31. One of these days I'm going to bank all this money. Things I like most about Epinions I like the purity and good naturedness of the people (with only a few despicable exceptions). I like the way we learn from each other on how to see things and express ourselves- gather together the right kind of people and you'll be amazed how many secrets of life and society you can unlock. (On a more sly note, I love rising to the competition too) I like building a persona of myself that is full of integrity, wisdom and awareness (though there have been times when I've let the real me spill out). I like impressing myself when I write something really good that pierces the surface. I like being nostalgic about the feelings I got the first time I watched or listened to something. I like making unique claims about how I believe ABBA actually wrote very intelligent melodies and lyrics, or how the violence in movies today is actually tame compared to 20 years ago- not the other way round. I like a lot of the freedom that Epinions gives me in its Writer's Corner section that covers any grounds (though having said that I do prefer some kind of prompt to write about a given thing). Things I dislike most about Epinions Well I do wish more people would comment on my reviews and that there were more kind of conversations going on in my comment sections rather than comments made by people just passing through, as long as there's no degeneration into flame wars or interrogations. If you asked me a few months back, I would have said the lack of a Video/DVD request for items absent from the Epinions database that I was itching to review. Fortunately one has been added recently by the leads so I have nothing to complain about. In-fact as far as I can tell, the new Video/DVD request form even allows us to add Videos and DVDs that are not in American format and aren't sold in America. This is a bonus for me, being a Brit and all (Epinions may be an American site but I'm sure some of its readership is international). Besides, at the moment my reviews are very collectionist about 1980's products and I like to be able to add the DVDs "The Comic Strip Presents", "Round the Twist" and "Christiane F." for completion, as well as the recent new "Doctor Who" series. The thing that most irritates and infuriates me about Epinions though is trying to preview reviews and getting messages telling you you have an opening bracketed 'B' for bold text or 'I' for itallic text and that you need to put over the closing one without being told where to find and correct the little bugger because it won't even preview for you. I mean does it really amke any sodding difference? (By the way I write this having just recieved such an error message right now) Other things that irritate me is the completely useless product search engine that tends to list for people the loosely connected 50 alternatives to the product they actually typed for. Admittedly it's the kind of thing that only irritates me when I stop to think about it, but what really frustrates me about it is that when I first joined the site three years ago, the search engine was perfectly straightforward and useful- how's that for progress? I also hate being stuck with the scum of Epinions- the trolls, neo-nazis, spammers and general bullies on the site. I don't understand why they haven't been kicked out yet, but it really gets up my craw that Simply_Crispy was going to humiliate some of these undesireables in his recent "Crispy's Awards" but he got threatened with tickets for it by the Epinions powers, which is ridiculous- those pigwigs who had never bothered to give the scum the kicking they deserved really had their heads up their a*ses there. Had Simply_Crispy not named and shamed them, I wouldn't have known which members to be wary of. I'd say the final thing about Epinions that I dislike is just how addictive it has become for me. Almost to the point where I sometimes wish I'd never joined the site in the first place. It's often been said that when reviewing entertainment products you somehow end up analysing a lot of the film's/album's/book's magic away. Somehow reviewing for Epinions has become a major priority in my life. There's many times where I come away from watching a film or TV series or listening to an album and immediately I'll want to write about it and I'll be constructing paragraphs and sentences in my head. It's mainly the 80's reviews that I think are the problem for me- what started as a nice fun activity topic has become a compulsive and seemingly unending chore for not only reviewing 80's items I've enjoyed, but for seeking out more items under that umbrella and it often really is a case of buying DVDs purely for the sake of reviewing them. To a degree its become such a chore that I think when I do a non-80's review for a change, they are noticeably more enthusiastic. Members I admire most on Epinions It has to be remembered that I am a very different person now to who I was when I joined the site. I used to be a rather prudish and modest person, and now I've become very anti-Conservative, so the people I idolised and made role models for myself out of back then are not the people I see the same way now- role models are sometimes only temporary, which is the way it should be really. As I develop I look for new philosophers, for something that breaks new ground, is more open and isn't as rigid or elitist as the last. It should also be remembered that although I started reviewing mainly in music, nowadays I have concentrated more on movie reviews. In my early years there were three Epinions members I looked up to for their way of reviewing and wanted to aspire to be up to their standards. They were brotherman, LessThanNick1 and Monnie1976. I was drawn to LessThanNick1 and Monnie1976 first. They had an extraordinary talent for working with simplicity and snappiness but really capturing, piercing and juicing the flavour of the music they were reviewing in a few sentences- however I never got the oppurtunity to mingle with them, as it were. I was also drawn to brotherman as a reviewer who took Epinions reviewing most seriously- he takes the music totally to heart, he takes the economy of his own prose to high standards and he is compelling in expressing his voice and opinion- and his opinions are completely his own. So I tried my best to follow in his footsteps to write reviews that gravitated to that level. I also really loved and admired Anne-Gwish for her irreverent, stylish and hilarious reviews. Unfortunately she had left the site before I had even joined, so I never got to tell her so. At the moment my idols as it were are the dearly deaprted Simply_Crispy who had superb talent as one of Epinion's best comedians. He was also a damn good reviewer too- the kid had talent. I really wish he was still here, but alas he finally got a life and left us sad losers behind. Millinocket, or Sue is also my favourite reviewer. She also made Lead in movies recently- congratulations to you Sue! Again immensely talented as a writer, but especially kind hearted too and not afraid to be outspoken about how she feels about the modern world's society and politics, which I've always been drawn to with people. And finally is Pyfr. At first he was just doing alternative retro music reviews which always made me laugh and they impressed me a lot -particularly since they were only his debut reviews and very strong ones at that- but as yet I had no knowledge of his politics or his intellect, and then he started writing his political pieces and a lot of it was so surprising to me and was so right on that it made my jaw drop. I must say I've learned a lot from reading him about the modern world and the contemporary rebirth of cold blooded conservativism and neo-nazism in my generation. My ultimate goal at Epinions I have several goals actually..... My long term goal is completion of the task I started- to basically reach a point where I have reviewed enough TV shows, films, books and music from the 1980's period to be able to sit on the pile and say to myself- "That's it! The collection is as complete as it will ever be! There's no more I need to write!" I will probably still write reviews and write-offs now and again, but to be fair, by that point I will probably be so sick of the 80's that I'll never go near another 80's product again. As I'm such a sucker for completion I will also in the short term try and get round to doing the belated final two chapters of that "To London and Back" story. I also intend to write a long and brilliant socio-political essay, elaborating on the topics I mentioned above (I must say it is pyfr who has unknowingly inspired me to do this). It's going to take some time and I predict some opinionated gits are going to give me hidden NH's for dareing to criticise the American Way, but I'll be so proud of it when its finished. Finally my Epinions addiction has been affecting my College/University work for some time now and I'm coming to realise that perhaps Epinions is best suited for those who have graduated from Education and who's Jobs require no homework at all. But I think I've come up with the solution to discipline myself to put work first now- and the solution is to submit my University assignments on Epinions under Writer's Corner- that way I incorporate my Epinions life into my work life as well as my leisure life (fingers crossed!!) So until I've finished them, this will be the last epinions review I will write. Another way I think I can discipline myself is by waiting for special occasions beofre writing certain film reviews- that way I can postpone my review on "Back to the Future II" till Christmas, save my reviews on Spike Lee joints of the 80's till Black History Month comes around, save reviewing George A. Romero's Dead Trilogy till Thanksgiving.... you get the idea. So that about wraps it up, and is thorough a telling of my journey on Epinions as I can convey.

Read all comments (13)|Write your own comment

Write an essay on this topic.