I Yelp Like a Ghost Trapped in the Machine

Though ojouchan and mrgoodluckbear are fans, Yelp makes me angry in the pit of my stomach. I still not sure I can fully articulate why, but I'll try.

First, it's important to understand that there are two Yelps, one for visitors and one for members. As a visitor, Yelp is a searchable database of businesses and services. Actually, no, it's not a database of businesses and services, it's a database of reviews of businesses and services. To be specific, it's a database of user-submitted reviews of businesses and services.

Do I need to split hairs? Yes, I do; the differences are crucial when you're a visitor. Because they affect how good your search will be. If you're trying to get impressions of a particular place, this is a decent site to use, like the user reviews of books at Amazon. Maybe there's nothing, maybe there's a whole bunch of information. Take it with a grain of salt, though most Yelp reviews do appear to be honest.

But what if you don't have a place in mind? How useful is Yelp then? Well, let's say I want to find a restaurant in Van Nuys. I search for "restaurants" using the location "Van Nuys CA." And the result, forty-one restaurants, only one of which is in the correct area code. Instead, Yelp recommends that I leave the area and head out to Sherman Oaks, Studio City, even West Hollywood before trying the things right around the area.

Now, there are ways that I'm supposed to deal with this problem. The first is to limit my search to a neighborhood. But you'll notice that the list of neighborhoods Yelp suggests for limiting doesn't include Van Nuys. In fact, the first suggestion, Beverly Hills, doesn't have any results in the top forty. I can also use "search in map area" to limit the range, but I still have to focus in pretty tightly to get Van Nuys restaurants into the top ten. To get the information I want, I have to fight against the information that Yelp is naturally inclined to give me.

The details of Yelp's algorithm are, of course, not public. But based on the site's "social networking" features and my own experience, I believe that what the Yelp algorithm excels at is showing you places that Yelp members go to.

On the surface, this seems doesn't seem like a bad thing. And if it's what you want, it definitely isn't a bad thing. Certainly, the owners would argue that what they're providing is an assurance of quality and dependability by offering you restaurants that have been reviewed multiple times by regular Yelp members. But when Yelp advertises itself as a "city guide," it's not true. It's a zeitgeist guide. You're not getting information about an area, you're getting a view of the area through the lens of Yelp's members. Or, if you're in an area on the outskirts of where dedicated members frequent, you're deliberately not getting a view of the area, based on the biases of the same Yelp members. When I search for restaurants in Van Nuys, I see nothing, because Yelp members don't go there.

And as a visitor, you don't really know anything about Yelp's members. And you don't know how they and Yelp are skewing your view of the city. If you're looking at a particular establishment and want to know more about a reviewer, you can use the member's profile to read other reviews and hopefully get a sense of his or her taste. But where do you go to vet the absence of a review? How do you evaluate the tenor of silence?

But let's say you decide you want to become a member. What are things like then?

Well, first of all, there's the very common Web 2.0 dilemma of user-generated content. Members write reviews to populate Yelp's database and give Yelp's algorithm something to search. Without these reviews, Yelp as a business, cannot exist. So members are providing Yelp with the raw meaterials it needs to be a company in exchange for . . . nothing, except a chance at being elite. And I don't just mean getting a little badge on your member profile. Buying into "Yelpitude" means that you are accepting the city gaze of hipness, sceneness, and coolness.

Because on Yelp, your existence is not defined by your thoughts or your knowledge—it's only tangentially defined by your taste. Instead, you are the slime trail of consumption you leave across the city, crystalized as reviews. You may not actually be what you buy, but you're certainly where you buy.

Who are you? You're someone who's hot because you eat to the hottest places and tell Yelp about them.

Who are you? You're someone who's hip because you find at out-of-the-way places to tell hip people about by telling Yelp.

Who are you? You're someone who's cool because you shop at cheap but arty locations that you tell Yelp about.

It's not even a Twitter-like documentation; it doesn't focus on the individual. All reviews get crushed as grist for the database and the algorithm. After the exhortations to "be personal, be irreverent, be you," all of those things get lost as your experience, your node in the supposed social network, is reduced to advocacy for consumption, either at location A or at location NOT A. The site becomes a blur of young, hip heads chattering endlessly, their bodies, lives, and loves removed and stored elsewhere.

I created an account at ojouchan's urging. I was annoyed that one of my favorite restaurants, Simon's Cafe, not only had no reviews, it didn't even have an unreviewed stub.

I started writing a review, entering the local business information, but when I looked at the blank entry field, I couldn't do it. Why was I enriching Yelp's owner's? What was I getting out of the process? I chance for someone to say that the review was "cool"? Why should I let my affinity for the place be reduced to a data node? Would I do it for everything in my life? Mark my territory by piddling for every shop I walked into, every professional I talked to? And even if I did, again, why offer it up to the well-lined pockets of Yelp?

I felt sick. I couldn't do it. I left the page blank, and eventually I closed the window. My profile remains barren, a ghost consumed by the Yelp machine.

TueNYTX: 4:15.