Nearly a month after the occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge began, Oregon State Police and the FBI arrested several members of the armed militia group led by Ammon Bundy. Lavoy Finicum, the group’s spokesperson, was killed by law enforcement in the incident. Details on the confrontation are spare at this time; militia members say Finicum was complying with the officers and surrendering, while officials say he was resisting. But the wildlife refuge and the strip of highway where the confrontation occurred are not the only battlegrounds in this war. Another fight has broken out between the militia’s supporters and critics—the Amazon review page for Finicum’s novel Only by Blood and Suffering.
The novel tells the story of a family living in the western US in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. The Bonham family has, fortunately, prepared for this sort of catastrophe; they’re well-armed, well-stocked, and have the skills necessary for surviving the collapse of society—skills such as defending themselves from neighbors clamoring for supplies and government agents trying to impinge upon their freedoms. The story ends with a devastating shootout (spoiler alert: the patriarch of the Bonham family wins). It’s the kind of narrative that perfectly reflects the fears of many anti-government militias in the US. Weak national policy will make us victims of foreign aggression, the government will disarm the populace, once beloved neighbors and communities will rise up against each other, and so on.
Finicum, or “tarp man” as he was dubbed after media outlets showed images of him under a blue tarp, was by no means a well-known author before the occupation, but his book has good reviews on Amazon. Currently it’s at 4.2 stars, but its rating is in flux as critics and defenders alike flood the page with reviews. Before the occupation reviews were largely very positive. Out of 17 1 star reviews, only two are pre-occupation. None are verified purchases. A recent review reads: “Red neck garbage rant. Lucky for us readers ‘tarpman’ will no longer torture us with this junk.” 7 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
It’s safe to assume that at least some, if not many, of these reviewers—positive or negative—have not read the book and are reviewing purely to express a political opinion. But why? Why the hell are people doing this? Why, of all the ways to voice an opinion on the Bundy occupation and 2nd amendment rights and bad writing and cowboy culture, would people choose Amazon reviews? It happens more often than you might think. Todd Miller, author of Border Patrol Nation, also received a deluge of “troll” reviews for his book on immigration policing of the US/Mexico border. As with Only by Blood, the vast majority of Miller’s 1 star reviews are not verified purchases. The primary complaint against the book is that it presents a biased, anti-border patrol perspective.
Miller told me that the backlash happened shortly after the book was published and reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, and that it seemed to be part of a coordinated effort. I’m inclined to agree—the negative reviews read as if a group of people got together for a book club discussion and had all the same things to say about it. It’s hard to know the effects this effort had on book sales, but they can’t be good. “I have wondered since then if it has affected how people perceive the book—particularly folks who are simply doing random searches on Amazon … Because of the trolling, of course, there is a low star rating, which is the first thing that people see if they are looking over titles,” Miller told me. When Miller reached out to Amazon about the seemingly coordinated effort to lower his book’s ratings, he was told that Amazon does not vet reviews. So, tough luck.
Something the two books have in common is the way reviewers are acknowledging the disingenuous nature of negative reviews based not on the substance, but on the political views of the authors. In the case of Only by Blood, many positive reviewers accuse critics of being “paid trolls,” though whom they might be paid by is a mystery. Some reviewers are even explicit about their ignorance of the book’s content. One three-star review reads:
No, I have not read the book. But how important is that now ? How sad that a man must die, exacerbated by leaving 11 children fatherless, for what? A deluded sense of self-importance, fed by a heartless right wing media that cares naught for its viewers, only for the quick bucks it makes from spreading irrational fear and hate.
It reads like a comment someone might leave on NPR’s Facebook post about Finicum’s death, not something you’d write on a site selling a fictional book.
Reviews are, without a doubt, broken. Most of us have probably looked up a café on Yelp with middling reviews and, when checking out the worst ratings, see someone complaining that the host was rude, or they ran out of caesar dressing, or there isn’t enough parking. Sure, these are inconveniences, but they don’t merit a 2-star rating. Similarly, someone who’s owned an electric shaver for a grand total of three days can leave a 5-star Amazon review having used it exactly once and with no idea of how it will function in a month. These are problems with reviews generally, as a system. But what is happening in these two examples is altogether different. These reviews aren’t just broken—people are actively breaking them.
So I ask again: why? I think the answer is twofold. First, reviews are easily quantifiable. 5 stars or 1 star—love it or hate it. It’s a great medium for expressing extreme opinions. Combined with the narrative element, its an appealing way to make a point. You get to explain yourself while being easily categorized into one camp or another, grouping yourself with like-minded people and setting yourself at odds with your rhetorical opponent. Imagine if Facebook let us rank posts. We’d hate it at first, we’d write think pieces about how awful it is, and then we’d promptly start using it in every flame war we saw. Don’t get any ideas, Zuckerberg.
Second, posting a Facebook comment on an NPR post can feel a bit like screaming into the abyss—or, more accurately, whispering in a crowded room full of crying babies. But with reviews, you can actually see the numbers changing. You can see the percentages of ratings from 5 to 1 shrinking or growing. And, if you believe that reviews are an important tool for helping people decide what purchases to make, it follows that by altering the rating you are having a direct effect on both the author and the discourse surrounding the topic. A “liberal, biased” account of immigration is seemingly undermined by its 3-star rating, and a “patriotic freedom fighter’s” fictional piece is all the more insightful if it has 4.5 stars. It’s the lowest of the low-hanging fruit of political engagement. It’s easy, anonymous, and requires little to no time investment.
Still, there is something about this explanation that feels a bit hollow. Even if it isn’t a terribly time consuming task, people are going out of their way to publish a review of a book they haven’t read, on a page that not many will see, all so they can shift the book’s rating a few decimal points. To complicate this even further, many of the most recent 5-star reviews are jokes at Finicum’s expense. For example, Amazon user Lucky Thoreau writes:
A truly new American voice in literature. Sadly silenced forever. It’s my only hope he read my gift of Mary Renault’s “The Persian Boy,” which I included in my survival box to the Patriots of Oregon along with the five bottles of Paris Hilton’s, “Just Me,” spray cologne for men, powdered Lobster Newburg Sauce (just add butter and milk) and an eight track copy of “Doug Clark and his Hot Nuts,” greatest hits.
There are others like this—5-star reviews obviously mocking Finicum or parodying the patriotic/cowboy persona of both his characters and his life. It’s callous and mean spirited, but also playful and bizarre. Much like the giant dildos many sent to the militia members, it’s hard to wrap your head around. So thanks, Amazon, for making politics weirder every day.
Britney is on Twitter.