By Larry Sheingold –
One thing you’ll notice about atlarrys.com, our sister website that offers restaurant recommendations: if we can’t recommend a place, we don’t write about it. We’re the anti-Fox News of online restaurant analysis. The idea is to let you see if your tastes match ours – based solely on our positive impressions.
Fox’s provocative emotion-churners would be lost in this format. So would most of the self-appointed analysts who ring the virtual water cooler to obsess about dining out.
The web is crawling with amateur whistle-blowers eager to offer opinions. Their intent, of course, is to advise you about the restaurants – good or bad – as they see it. But often as not their colorful critiques reveal more than they realize.
Now I am no psychologist. In fact, most of the following critic afflictions exist only in my imagination.But if you take a quick spin through the web world of volunteer dining opinion, you will find some amazing observations. Many could only come from people suffering the conditions listed below.
Some of the quotes admittedly are extracted from longer pieces of writing. But they all are word-for-word as I found them. Each is preceded by my diagnosis of the author.
ONCE-A-MONTH-HAUSEN BY PROXY
“I am not a huge dessert person but I was still hungry and also PMSing which I found out the next day so naturally the apple turnover was calling out to me.”
BIBLICAL DISPROPORTION DISORDER
“Holy crap this food is good.”
PRE-PARTUM DEPRESSION
“I cringe when I notice the place while driving by.”
BORDERLINE PERSONALITY OBSESSION
“Getting elbowed by a big lady next to you while she double-fists her dinner isn’t fun either.”
PRE-TRAUMATIC STRESS ANXIETY
“If you complain about the service or why they add 18% grad, they call the police.”
ORAL FIXATION
“It’s apparent to all of us what he has in his mouth.”
SECOND-HAND DISORDER
“Smokers shouldn’t cook.”
COLOR COMMENTARY DISORDER
“I know I’m white but I love me some tequila.”
STELLAR DEPRESSION
“Erroneously elevated to five stars by their adoring yet (in a culinary sense) uneducated public.”
ASSISTED DIET ASSOCIATIVE ANXIETY
“It reminded me of the food in the nursing home my father runs – limp, colorless, and uninspired.”
BINGE CRITICISM DISORDER
“I wish the same could be said of the hostess Katy, or should we call her catty. She is quite possibly the worst hostess I have ever witnessed. There is not more than a light smattering of gray matter residing in her poorly coiffed head. She definitely is their weakest link.”
At atLarrys.com, we will continue to say only positive things about the restaurants we recommend – or nothing at all. That rule won’t always hold, however, about observations of others in the world of web reviews, where just like at Fox News, you don’t have to be an expert to offer your opinion … or to psychoanalyze the people who do.
