I am getting really tired of searching for a quality firearm review to link to, only to come across regurgitated manufacturer specifications and photos under the title “Review.”
Maybe you’re incapable of doing a quality review, maybe you’re lazy, maybe you actually think that you can review something from a single manufacturer photo.
If you’re the type of blogger that chooses what you think is SEO over quality content, you’re already behind the curve. You may rank well now, but SEs have you figured out. Your days are numbered. Quality content is rapidly becoming synonymous with SEO. I know that, and I’m not even an SEO Padawan.
You do a disservice to your readers/viewers (if any) and you take up space in rankings that should be occupied by people like Caleb at RomeoTangoBravo. When he comes across something new, he calls it “(Product) Hits the Shelves” or “(Product) First Impressions.” See? Honesty. Same with Aaron at Weapon Blog. Holy crap, a review that’s actually a review. Speaking of review reviews, I haven’t quite figured out (FateOf)Destinee yet, but her videos are well done and unique, and she actually uses the firearm.
I may be a bit cranky, and this is another post where I have the potential to come across as an arrogant jerk, but I find this incredibly annoying. I don’t link to other sites very often, and I kinda feel bad about it, because I know people link to my blog. Most of the time I just don’t have time to check out what other people are doing, and other times, when I do browse around, I am just disheartened by what I see. I think every gun blogger has a different reason for getting started as a blogger, and I really like some of the people I come across. They’re earnest and want to deliver the best content they can. I think they’re sick of the BS too, even if they never mention it online.
Others apparently want to be the equivalent of the hooker trying to get Joker’s money in Full Metal Jacket, saying “Me love you long time” when she really meant “Me make you feel burning sensation long time.” Stop wasting everyone’s time.
Can you do a review video on all your fancy pens, cufflinks, sports cars and trophy wife?
I actually bought the domain carwapen.com a few months back… 😉 I only have a few sets of cuff links and one pen that I’m very attached to though. I am, happily, single, so no trophy wife reviews 😉
Bravo! I couldn’t agree more.
I’d extend the sentiment to 90% of all print publication gun reviewers as well. Though it seems these reviewers do at least shoot the firearms being reviewed they are almost always so full of gushing platitudes it’s clear they are just shills for the industry.
The ones that especially get my goat include statements such as: “my sample was hand delivered by the company president (or vice president, or marketing director, or product manager)” or “I was invited to the ranch owned by X person associated with the company”, or the ubiquitous “it shoots better than I can” and dismissing poor groups as being the fault of the shooter (if that’s true use a bench rest!).
I was actually invited to another country recently, to go on a hunting trip with the owner of a major company, because I was (behind the scenes) critical of their products and gave them hard data on how to improve them. Cool, huh?
This would be unnecessarily meta (and thus probably a waste of time), but have you thought of doing a parody review of some typical gun mag / online reviews?
Echoing Griffin here, what bothers me most is the uncritical review – the one where they honestly could find nothing wrong with the gun / accessory. I recently picked up a magazine (print, not the other kind), where they had a bunch of “reviews” of the different pocket 9mm pistols that have come out since early 2011. They reviewed Kahr, Ruger, Diamondback, and a few others besides, and concluded that each was the perfect gun. No side-by-side comparisons, no real discussion of relative strengths and weaknesses, each a glowing review.
Now it may be that each of the above is a quality gun and a good buy, but not each will be perfect for each shooter, and a competent editor could at least have made that point somewhere. A look at relative trade-offs such as cost, accessories, grip angles and sizes all would have been useful. No assistance to me at all though when I went to make a purchase.
I have thought about some parody things – we’ll see what time allows for – I am currently working on some really exciting stuff and will link to it from my blog when it comes out.
I see a lot of this type of thing on youtube, since it’s pretty easy to read off the internet or even perpetuate other people’s views in your own “review”.
I will say I’m not a huge fan of Destinee. Her videos are definitely unique, but they sometimes cross over from being fun to being obnoxious. It gets old and her “characters” she acts as sometimes are not great. That being said, I like some of her stuff.
I guess it’s cool to be trendy even in the firearm community.
I am thinking about ripping off her “character” thing for a video (giving her credit for the idea). Mine would be shorter, probably just one sentence. Characters would include “Hipster Andrew,” “Nerd Andrew,” “Douchebag Andrew,” “Terrorist Andrew,” “Prepper Andrew,” and so on.
Couldn’t hit the mark more if I wanted to. Quality will get you on top, though it will take a while. I don’t have experience in reviewing guns online, because the market in the Netherlands is way too small and well, people are generally scared to be recognised as gun-owners.
I have however reviewed games and entertainment technology for over ten years. It is scary to see that the gun-industry is taking the same path as the videogames industry. The internet is swarmed with shallow reviews with no consumer-advice. That’s why this blog is in my RSS reader and others are not. Keep up the good work 🙂
Thanks! Spelling fixed 😉 Hey, have you reviewed ME3 yet?
I appreciate the kind words and your take on the ‘situation’. When I started my site I was tired of searching for reviews only to find manufacture photos and opinions. I decided that I would call a review a review and if it was something else it wouldn’t be dressed up pretending to be what it wasn’t. Keep up the good work!
Yep, pretty much the same reason why I started blogging. Thanks dude. I like what you do, a lot.
Preach it brother!
Yep.
What I want to know is whether I want the gun or not. Maybe a gun looks like it fits my needs, but the manufacturers have a problem. Maybe it breaks. Maybe its trigger sucks.
Even if you don’t just repost the manufacturer specifications in an attempt to look more like Future Weapons, if you can’t find it in you to say anything bad about the firearm, you have no business reviewing it. Several high profile review sites (cough, Gunblast, cough) fall victim to this, If literally every single gun, from a Hi Point unlocked breech pistol to an FN Hi Power comes through with a glowing recommendation, that hasn’t told me anything, and, at best, I’ll check your review for some manufacturer specifications.
You’ve got to be able to buy a gun, not invest your ego into it, not incorporat it into some bullshit image of yourself as an action hero, and actually give me your estimation of its worth as a tool, good or bad.
*incorporate
/snark on / Hey, what do you have against Hi-Point? They’re the swiss army knives of the gun world – not great at anything, but occasionally handy. They make great hammers in a pinch, and the finish works well as sandpaper too!
“I may be a bit cranky, and this is another post where I have the potential to come across as an arrogant jerk…”
No, I don’t think so, you do good work and so you’ve earned the right to call out those who don’t.
Your cranky view and real world testing is exactly why I check daily to see what’s up. And you reward us with the knowledge there are other practical points of view out there.
Having recently posted a similar gripe on a watch forum, I was disappointed to see the minions of merchandising completely missed the point – it’s not a review especially when it linked to the selling website. At that point, it’s just an infomercial. Do we really need anonymous shills wasting bandwidth and clogging search engines with drivel? Doesn’t look like there’s much to prevent it except what has worked in the past, actual use and analysis.
It’s not cut and paste here, no “Me make you feel burning sensation long time.” Best laugh I’ll have today.
Just did a search on my site for the word “Review.” I’m clean!
My main complaint with most gun reviews is they are similar to the car reviews in the auto magazines: “Look, here’s the latest and greatest thing from Detroit/Milan/Stuttgart/, and it goes REALLY REALLY FAST!!!!”
That’s nice, if I have an extra $50k+ to spend on a mid-life crisis. However, I’m more concerned about what a given gun will do over it’s lifetime. I don’t buy a gun a month, if I’m lucky, it’s a gun a year, so I need to make sure what I buy will hold up as an investment, so putting 200 rounds through it tells me squat about what it’s like to live with that gun day in and day out. A pistol that can hold up to a 2000 Round Challenge is much more interesting to me than the last überblaster.
Amen.
For curiosity, I wanted to know what the ballistc characteristics of the Hornady zombie ammo was. I googled it. What a waste of time! Product reviews were nothing more than links to links of announcements or advertising.
I’m pretty sure that it’s identical to the A-Max rifle line and the Critical Defense pistol line.
I appreciate analytical information… There is a lot of qualitative information reviewers and others can provide is often good, but just because it “feels small” in your hand means nothing to me… and the basic specifications I can get from the manufacturer’s web site…
Hard data is what I like… and you do a good job with that… as far as how a gun “feels”… I think each shooter needs to educate themselves, researching, and trying out firearms as they can…
I can put my Lyman trigger pull gauge on a gun and tell you it takes 8.2 pounds of pull, but until I actually try the trigger pull, it’s hard to just take a reviewer’s word for it… the Ruger LCR amazed me because in use I would have guessed the trigger pull to be two or three pounds under what it actually was… and I didn’t realize that until – I – had it in my hand…
Thanks for your post…
Dann in Ohio