“South Park” Asks, Does Yelp Help?

In the episode titled amp8220Youamp8217re Not Yelpingamp8221 the owners and operators of the title townamp8217s many restaurants were terrorized by a growing number of patrons who identified themselves as amp8220food criticsamp8221 and made continuous demands of them The best tables Brighter lighting Free desserts Unlimited fawning and fussing in their restaurants and other places tooIn reality the demanding ones werenamp8217t professional critics at all They were simply people with smartphones most of them brimming with smug selfassurance all of them greedy and selfish and each one powered by Yelp the app that allows just about everyone to comment on and rate just about anything but is especially identified as the place to go to check out eating establishments Just this past weekend my friends and I relied on Yelp to choose a lunch spot during a visit to Storrs Conn We hit on a winner The Dog Lane Cafamp233Identified as Yelpers the powermad citizens of South Park slowly expanded their reign of terror threatening restaurant owners with utter ruination in the form of low Yelp scores if they didnamp8217t comply with their every request There were hundreds of them amp8211 each one convinced that everyone else in town was hanging on every word they uttered and every rating they postedOf course demon seed Cartman arrogantly seized the opportunity to identify himself as a food critic and proved to be the most egotistical Yelper of them all making one of his schoolmates amp8211 the son of an immigrant couple who were among the small restaurant owners struggling against the onslaught of the Yelpers amp8211 do his terrible bidding at every turn For onceamp160the pressure was off Cartmanamp8217s putupon pals notably the humble bumbler ButtersEventually the restaurant owners amp8211 including Tuong Lu Kim above the longtime longsuffering owner of City Wok banded together and banned the Yelpers from their establishments amp8211 but the Yelpers proved too mighty to ignore Faced with plunging profits the bullied businesspeople reluctantly agreed to allow the Yelpers back in all the while plotting sinister revenge against them which I will not spoil here except to say that it involved many different bodily secretions seen in a tuneful montage at the end that likely left viewers singing a new NSFW song You can hear it in the video below but again this is not something to play in the office or watch with your kids You have been warnedamp160As a longtime television critic who has witnessed the collateral damage done by the surging tide of bloggers and episode recappers infiltrating what had once been the territory of professional journalists who had proven themselves and earned their positions I couldnamp8217t help but relate to what I was watching Once upon a time in all areas of criticism from television to books to food to government policy amp8211 education context life experience and longterm commitment were essential Those are still important attributes in some media but criticism as an art form has been egregiously compromised a subtext to the shenanigans in that amp8220South Parkamp8221 episodeBut I donamp8217t think thatamp8217s what amp8220South Parkamp8221 geniuses Trey Parker and Matt Stone were getting at Theyamp8217ve been producing their showamp160for a remarkable 19 seasons and remain as timely provocative and thought provoking as ever perhaps more than anyone else working in television Rather I believe they were commenting as they generally do on the impact of citizen journalistscriticsreporters on society in general Nobody in their story was benefitting from the output of the Yelpers as evident by the title of the episode except for the Yelpers themselves who had figured out a way to utilize digital technology for their own selffocused benefit Thatamp8217s not uncommon behavior these days even when it comes to hooking up according to this recent article in Vanity FairThis is a good time to mention that some television networks and movie distributors are as guilty as anyone else of shifting power from the responsible few to the reactive many Just note the many advertisements they run in which they quote random tweeters who for all we know could be family and friends of the projectamp8217s producers and stars rather than select professionals whose job it is to know what they are talking about and keep everything in knowledgeable contextThere ought to be room for everything a balance between the old and the new amp8211 and that includes helpful criticism in all forms Like I noted above I owe last Saturdayamp8217s great lunch largely to Yelpers But criticism as a crowdsourced force I donamp8217t think soThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageMyersBizNet management or associated bloggers

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“South Park” Asks, Does Yelp Help?

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Ed Martin

Tomorrow Will Be Televised: “Buy It Now”, ZipWave TV & Quincy Jones Tribute Episode - Listen Live Today at 2pm - By Simon Applebaum

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“South Park” Asks, Does Yelp Help?

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Ed Martin

Tomorrow Will Be Televised: “Buy It Now”, ZipWave TV & Quincy Jones Tribute Episode - Listen Live Today at 2pm - By Simon Applebaum

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