Widget huckster sideshows

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.

It has caused me to rage-quit the internet at times, especially when I am “researching” technological widgets.

My current research is about practical gear for the kittens (and the older cats): harnesses, high-quality food (with careful consideration to the fact they are a large cat breed), leashes, backpacks, wall-climbing cat towers, drinking fountains, mental stimulation items for a breed prone to needing mental challenges, etc.

The list is extensive. And exhausting. And can be as rage-baiting as the tech widget research.

Because, when it comes down to it, there are almost no assurances that anything I read is anything more than “purchased opinion” masquerading as “independent review”.

Better yet?

“Self-review of why my own widgets are better” is also a thing, to add to the mix. Or forum “reviews” by owners or marketing folks posing as Average Joe (undisclosed or undeclared).

When I first considered getting a single kitten, there was a breeder who was outed by the other folks on the forum as being the breeder up-talking herself. Admittedly, it was pretty obvious because what I read looked very much like market copy and those “one protests too much” rejoinders. Closing the account after being called out was the only confessional required. And the community wasn’t even being mean about it, just: “C’mon, you should just come clean and admit you’re the breeder.” Not threats, not anger. You don’t quit a membership just because someone calls you out. Imagine that on WordPress? Hardly seems likely.

On the other hand, when you finally get something to click so you can get some real information, it’s like someone opening up a release valve and you sigh in one large hiss in harmony with the steam escaping that valve.

I only wish the pressure had never gotten so unbearable before that happened and that I could find a widget that actually meets my needs without the huckster sideshows.