If You Want to Control Your Destiny, Become Immune to Flattery

Most people are torn: They want to be appreciated, but secretly doubt if what they do is worth anyone's appreciation. These people (me included) are in trouble when someone is willing to use flattery to direct their efforts for an ulterior purpose.

I have often wondered how B. F. Skinner would have fared if he had been the subject of one of his own experimental theories about behavior modification rather than the experimenter. Well, I got my wish indirectly when I found myself on the receiving end of one of my own ideas.

I want to develop this point in detail because it will also help you understand how exponential improvements occur. Around the beginning of 2000, an online site started a new feature in which "customer reviews" could receive "helpful" votes from other customers.

The announcement made this sound like a big deal, but I didn't think anything of it at the time. Like most people in 2000, I had only a slow dial-up internet connection. The time it took to make such a vote was quite lengthy, which made it annoying to me. Why would anyone ever bother to vote "yes" or "no"?

I had always been an avid reader so the list of books that I had already read was quite large, and I still had copies of most of them at home or in the office. I also have a good memory for what I read. It was easy for me to thumb through those volumes and write a review.

With my second book due out in the fall, I thought it would be a good time to write reviews and mention that I was a book author. Perhaps someone would be curious and take a look at my books. I also was enjoying the writing practice.

Sometime during the year, the online site began ranking all of the reviewers by some secret formula. Although I had written only a few dozen reviews, I was surprised to learn that I was ranked number 55 from the top of all reviewers. Having put little effort into becoming number 55, I was amused by the thought of doing a little more reviewing to see how easy to it would be to move up in rank.

I didn't know it, but I had just been bitten by the reviewing bug in a very fundamental way. Within weeks, I was in the top 10 reviewers, but progress slowed down from there.

What was really going on? The online site was perishing for lack of information about the products it was selling. It didn't have the money to pay for anyone to write more content so it was hoping to flatter millions of customers to do the job for free.

I couldn't figure out why my progress became like molasses flowing in winter after moving upward like a tidal surge. There were people ranked ahead of me who had written almost no reviews and had far fewer "helpful" votes than I did. At that point, I made a good decision: Ignore the rankings and enjoy the experience. But it was fun to peek at my reviewer rank after seeing what my book sales ranks were for the day.

As they had with me, by instituting rankings the online had set a hamster wheel in motion that would eventually capture the energies of over millions of people.

Where are marketers using flattery to get the best of you? Reviewer beware of flattery!

Seed Newsvine

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