By Dona Bridges
Sometimes I want to give you my heart, Yelp.com. I want to praise you in typo-ridden prose and give you that highest of all honors, the five star rating. You are a star, a soapbox, a great leveler of the playing field, where the voices of the people at last ring loud and clear, audible above advertisers and bullshit merchants.
Sure, some of my friends talk shit about you. They say that you’re too influential, and we now have to live and die by the sharply worded textual swords wielded by Laura B. or other (less hilarious) Yelp members. My restaurant co-workers click through your reviews and say, “What if I came to your workplace, then wrote about it on a highly trafficked website? While not bothering to fact check?” I might agree sometimes, especially when there’s a new review of my workplace that uses words like “slow,” “annoying,” or – how ’bout this —”bitch.”* I might roll my eyes, get all red in the face, and join the hating party: “Yeah! You come in here and do my job! Then I’ll yelp you until you cry!”