Fake Customer Reviews
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About
Fake Customer Reviews are a type of internet humor which occurs when an online product page is inundated with exaggerated customer reviews. These false reviews are often filled with hyperbolic / exaggerated statements and are usually meant to inspire humor rather than critiquing the actual product they are written about.
Origin
Though their exact origin is unknown, the practice of making fake reviews is often employed by spammers on many websites who are trying to sell exotic products. The practice has also been used by the trolling communities and is often an element in comedy sketches that parody advertisements (see Kitchen Gun and Infomercial Fails).
Spread
These reviews have been noted on sites such as Amazon,[1] iMBD, Craigslist,[2] as well as many others. Though there is no exact origin of this meme, it is thought to have propagated in a manner such as Infomercial Fails where a few positive reviews about a mediocre product evolves into paragraph long reviews about how a product "saved someone's life." The following are several popular phony reviews:
Three Wolf Moon Shirts
Three Wolf Moon is a t-shirt that was ironically made into one of the top selling apparel items on Amazon in 2009 after being inundated with tongue-in-cheek customer reviews. The product is thought to be the forerunner for many of these parody reviews.
Banana Slicer Reviews
Banana Slicer are satirical testimonials submitted by users on the online shopping site Amazon for the kitchen gadget product Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer. Due to its perceived lack of utility, the product page became an easy target for these tongue-in-cheek reviews.
Bic "For Her" Pens
Bic For Her Pens were a line of pens designed with female consumers in mind. Given the sexist undertones of the product, users on amazon posted many tongue-in-cheek customer reviews of the product.
My Little Pony: The Princess Promenade
The My Little Pony: Princess Promenade Troll was a series of fake reviews left on the IMDb page for the movie. The average rating for this movie on the site gained 7.8 out of 10 with a staggering 4,846 votes as well as 37 reviews. Comments on the movie ranged from exclamations of the "life changing" nature and how "breathtaking" the film was.
Wilton Silver Color Mist
After the release of the 2015 film Max Max: Fury Road, reviews begun popping up making references to the silver spray used by the "war boys" in the movie. Reviews often alluded to how the shiny chrome-like spray would lead them to "Valhalla" so that they could join the "Immortan Joe." Users also tied in the phrase from the movie "Witness me!" as well as "I live, I die, I live again!" into their reviews (seen below).
Search Interest
External References
[1] Amazon – Funniest Reviews
[2] Craigslist – Best of CL
Top Comment
Not Trolling(I think...)
Jan 21, 2015 at 12:41AM EST