There are a lot of reasons in here about how bad reviews kill products, but I didn’t see mentioned how exceptional a product has to be to garner GOOD reviews. A business will get to the point of almost harassing you to leave a good review. In my experience people leave reviews when they are unhappy, and say nothing when they are satisfied.

An example of this was Teenage Engineering K.O. II EP-133 sampler. A bunch got released with broken fader knobs and the wave of bad reviews and complaints flooded in, drowning out the actual pros and cons of the device. T.E. isn’t exactly floundering from it, but in another circumstance that could have killed the product (which I find to be phenomenal).

As a guy who luckily only had to deal with the shitty realm of PUA in the early 2000s, I will say that typically it’s not a bike crash that gets you in the road. It’s more like you stumble across some con man who says he can “pick up any girl he wants and he’ll show you how!” So being a young impressionable male you try the advice and it usually doesn’t work. That leads (me at least) down the path of misogyny and “nice-guy ness” (I’m very sorry, I’m better now), and bada boom you’ve got yourself a roganite.