There’s on thing that you quickly discover whenever you decide to do “research” online for “a widget”. The intended use for the widget in question is largely irrelevant. There is a truism that holds, especially in the age of the internet: “Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.”
And that’s largely an okay thing, I suppose, if it is a casual interest that drives the research. But most of those opinions are bought and paid for by the people who want to you buy their widget instead of someone else’s widget. Free widgets abound in exchange for opinions — usually “positive” is the unsaid, and occasionally explicitly stated, requirement — which makes me look at most of these widget opinions with more than a hint of narrowed side-eye.
Negative reviews often have nothing to do with the widget itself. The box coming crushed in shipping is hardly the widget maker’s fault. Or buyer’s inattention to detail and buying the wrong widget for the intended purpose.
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