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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2554 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 8, 2026

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Anyone else feel like Google maps reviews (and most other online review systems) have become totally worthless the last few years? It seems like every single place has overwhelmingly 5 star reviews, no matter how bad it is. I can't tell if it's bots, paid reviewers, or just a weird culture where people think they're "being nice" by leaving a 5 star review. Either way, i no longer trust them at all.

Reviews in general have that problem, but if you focus on the text instead of the score you can usually get some useful information. Ignore the Karens complaining about rude employees or the manager not taking their problems seriously, or the 5 star reviews probably prompted by employees or bots and focus on unique information. A Google Maps review recently warned me off an automated carwash that was malfunctioning on one side, with the reviewer having pictures of his car half washed as proof.

It mostly comes up when I'm trying to find a place in a city i haven't been before. So I'm skimming through hundreds of reviews accross dozens of different places, and they all seem to be people who have never eaten at a restaurant before so they're just dazzled by the concept of having someone bring food to them in exchange for money.

My process for finding good restaurants in a new place

  1. Generate a )ist from Tiktoks and the local subreddit. From that list:

  2. look at menus, you can generally immediately eliminate places with shitty menus. You can maybe tell upside from menus, but this is easier to fake. You'll also go through their website on the way to the menu, which is also a signal.

  3. huge agree on reviews, at this point I largely ignore positive reviews. I mostly focus on the pictures of food, and then I read a bunch of negative reviews. Are they negative because the person is mad or from things outside of a restaurant control? Great. Negative because the food sucks? Eliminate.

Usually you end up with like 3-5 places, now just pick one, you won't be able to make a perfectly informed decision and this is enough.

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