Merit Crusade – Page 3 – The Frustrated CFO

Amendment to My Post on Vogue Covers, etc.

Those who have read it may remember that I specifically noted in that post that the possibility of diminishing number of the Confused Liberal Hipsters who misguidedly uphold Lena Dunham in high esteem as their feminist hero can be just my wishful thinking. Still, I feel obligated to tell my readers that yes, indeed, it was nothing more than a momentary slip into an illusion that people may be getting a little bit less stupid.

I cited New York Magazine's long-time silence about Girls and its creator as a hopeful sign. Well, I spoke too soon: In the current issue The Approval Matrix placed that (I mean the image in the picture) on the Brilliant side.

Then again, they might've been sarcastic… Like in, "brilliantly exploitive and shockingly repetitive," or something? You never know nowadays – hipsters don't possess genuine humor. Thanks, Tina Fey! And guess what? See the article below.

Lena Dunham Hosting SNL on March 8!

Executive Gender Equality: The Perversity of Admiration

Ever since this company made into a couple of 2013 national lists of the fastest growing entities, we have been accosted by a slew of various business services offering their assistance and support: insurance brokers, real estate brokers, HR management providers, marketing consultants, etc., and most notably for me – bankers.

The troubles that befell the banking industry a few years back resulted in its consolidation. The competition among the diminished number of the key players in the field of institutional finance has stiffened. They are fighting for clients with proven records of steady profitability, growing equity, and assets with high market liquidity, which, of course, are not that easy to find in our "recovering" economy. Hence, they are after our business.

All the better for us: We are approaching the expiration date of the credit agreement with our current lender and are looking for a relationship that would be a more suitable match to the fast-growing company. So, I'm doing what I've done quite a few times throughout my career: I'm meeting with a lot of bankers – explaining the business, answering their drilling questions, providing them with extensive data, spinning the info in the most thrilling way.

While all this is going on, I cannot help but notice the increased percentage of women in the banking mix. Well, that shouldn't be surprising, actually: according to many statistical reviews, more than 50% of the corporate middle management in this country are presently females. I hear from our own sales staff that purchase managers of our customers' (industrial sector, by the way) are predominately highly technical women in their 30s.

Of course, as we climb further up the ladder, the numbers diminish: men dominate upper management to the extend of 70-80%, and only 10% of the C-level executives are women. Still, I used to be the only "skirt" in a room full of male execs and financiers. Now, there is a female contingent on the opposite side of the table in 3 out of 4 meetings. Hell, the founder/CEO of this company is a woman. Hence, our board of directors is 50% female (her and I) – we are the tough side of the directorship.

So, here I am in our conference room listening to two representatives from one of the 10 largest banks in the world, who are making a presentation of their proposal (aka a Term Sheet in business dealings). One of them is a diminutive woman of Korean origin in her late 50s – she is the boss, the North-East Regional Director, a big gun brought on to get the deal closer to the finish line. With her is one of her many subordinates – a young and ambitious man in his early 30s. If I end up choosing this bank, I will get him as my Relationship Manager (RM).

The menagerie is balanced by a man at my side – COO/owner/our CEO's whity husband. He has his full charm on: he cannot help it – he has a soft spot for Pacific-Asian women. Now he admiringly "complements" the banker-lady for being deceptively tough, i.e. looking pretty and soft, while being steely behind her eyes. I tense up: here goes seclusive male chauvinism, and you never know how a woman will react to it.

She handles it beautifully, though: "Well, you know how it is – brain and beauty combined are lethal." She turns to me: "Right?" Well, I wouldn't know – never got a chance to rely on no beauty, just my brain. But I don't say that. I just smile.

I wish my COO would do the same, but he somehow takes it as an invitation for further "admiring." "Yes, you are absolutely right. I couldn't put it better myself," and he embarks on telling the bankers how his wife, our CEO, is especially successful in sales because she is a woman who can speak "sweetly on the phone." He actually uses those words. "It used to take me," he says, "four phone calls before Dow Chemical would call me back. But she sweetly leaves a voice mail and they return her call within 5 minutes!"

He is absolutely overjoyed with pride. The Korean lady's mouth gets very thin and she looks at me again -we both know: this is how it is. The men will always find the way to treat us as if we were inferior, whether through insults or with "compliments."

I am disgusted, but I'm willing to dismiss this on the principle "forgive them, for they know not what they do." And right then he turns his head to me, looks straight into my eyes, and says, "You cannot repeat it outside of this room. L. always gets very upset when I say this, even though I mean it as a good thing."

Seriously, dude? You've been warned about it before? By your wife, who is also your boss? And what? You cannot help yourself? Of course, you cannot, because it's written into your genetic code, like a primal instinct. And you are too insecure to consciously fight it off! If it was me… But she is not me, in many ways she is very different. And that's why he'd financed this business for her.

Vogue Covers, Anna Wintour’s Executive Decisions, Lena Dunham, Confused Hipsters, and All That Jazz

Goddammit!

In all honesty, I thought I was done with Ms. Lena Dunham. I said everything I wanted to say about “her Movie,” and “her Show,” and her “success”; I analyzed the background, motivations, and the role of the hipster media; I expressed my opinions – negative and otherwise (HBO’s Girls Still Play with “Tiny Furniture”, 2013 Golden Globe Awards, and the breakthrough 8th episode of season 2). The topic was important to me as yet another evidence of social and intellectual degradation of the so-called “cultured” bi-coastal populace. But as far as I was concerned, I exhausted the subject – I threw it into my waste basket, all used-up and crumpled. I had no future expectations (I still don’t) and I simply stopped paying attention.

Unfortunately, one cannot prevent other people from sharing their reactions – if not to her work, then to her public presence. And you can swat away incidental remarks, but this Vogue-cover affair created a splash of diverse opinions, which were shoved into my face by my personal and public social networks.

The funny thing is that if it wasn’t for the chatter around it, I wouldn’t even know that the cover happened in the first place: I never bought a single copy of Vogue in my life. Moreover, I never even notice it on the newsstands. It’s not a conscious effort, but, come to think of it, my mind must be blocking it out – after all, this magazine and it’s kin are responsible for image crises of millions of women around the world.

But again, this “controversy” of Ms. Dunham’s image gracing the cover of Vogue was brought to my attention. And, as a life-long student of human psychology, I found the spectrum of reactions to this occurrence in itself to be quite a curious matter, which I’m itching to analyze. So, fuck it, here is my assessment of various opinion-expressing groups.

1. Lena Dunham’s acquaintances from her pre-celebrity life.

It just so happens that I am separated by a mere one degree from Lena Dunham’s former Oberlin College classmates (one of my client’s nieces), and I hear that these young women are absolutely scandalized by her success in general and the Vogue cover in particular. Apparently, Ms. Dunham was an undistinguished student. Moreover, she was “practically unnoticeable” (mind you, not unconventional, rabble-rousing, or irksome as a lot of real artists are perceived in schools, but simply unnoticeable) in the classes of her chosen major, Creative Writing. Outraged exclamations such as “She was Nothing, just unremarkable Nothing!” have been quoted to me.

Well, let me tell you: unremarkable she could’ve been, but she was never a Nothing. Obviously these socially popular and academically overachieving children of wealthy businessmen (now, by the way, all in post-graduate programs trying hard to better their job-market chances) didn’t bother to learn anything about their awkward-looking classmate. Lena Dunham has been born and will always remain a person with deep roots and vast connections in the artistic community. Do I really have to explain that in this world it counts for more than any kind of personal and/or creative substance?

You see that picture at the top of this post? That’s Aura Rosenberg’s 1997 portrait of Lena, age 11, as her mother’s, Laurie Simmons, artistic object – a dummy. How telling! Ms. Dunahm has been manipulated into the life she has right now since childhood. She always knew that her creative efforts, such as they are, will get at least some attention from her parents’ close-knitted network of artists, gallery owners, museum curators, screenwriters, actors, and, of course, PR professionals.

So, while the members of this opinion group were chasing top grades, prestigious internships, and references from esteemed literature professors, Lena Dunham didn’t need any of that – she was already writing her awful sketches for the “arty” web series, which eventually made her a MOMA (!) darling, as well as scripts for her self-directed and self-starred unwatchable shorts, which, despite their quality, were accepted for showing at indie festivals.

2. Inexplicably blind fans, who naively think that Lena Dunham is one of them – a college grad struggling through her life in a big city full of dull jobs, bizarro living arrangements, hopeless relationships, and fake friendships. Not too pretty or interesting, not too hard-working, intelligent just enough by the currently very low standards, and without any relevant life skills, yet feeling entitled to success and happiness. These pitiful creatures loooooove Tiny Furniture and Girls, they devour Lena’s tweets and voyeuristically follow her Instagram. And they went and shelled out $10 for the damn Vogue, because they mindlessly welcome every instance of public recognition of the person they mistakenly perceive as an “unlikely star.” Her very success provides them with a false sense of hope for their own future.

They are so self-absorbed and clueless, they didn’t even notice the familial loft (presently on sale by Lena’s parents for $6.25 million). They are not sophisticated enough to grasp the priciness of the clothes Ms. Dunham was wearing in the photos taken before she made a single penny. They already forgot about one of the first-season episodes, in which Hannah Horvath “worries” about her high school classmate who is going to Hollywood without having any connections. In their blindness these people are not much different from the first group – they have no clue just how privileged Lena Dunham is.

3. Starving skinny bitches, fashion zealots, and male chauvinists,who are having seizures every time someone who “doesn’t fit Vogue‘s image” is featured on the cover of the magazine: like Jennifer Hudson, or Adele, or Ms. Dunham. What can I say to these fucking assholes? Go and eat something – your brain screams for some sugar! You say, these women (I don’t care much for any of them, by the way) don’t fit the “beauty” standard, but Sarah Jessica Parker does? How about Kristen Stewart who looks in all dresses as if she is in drag? And in whose acid-induced hallucinatory trip Lady Gaga can be considered a “dream girl?”

Vogue covers have nothing to do with beauty, or at least they shouldn’t – they are supposed to entice prospective advertisers into buying space inside the mag. The trend-setting bullshit should be secondary to Anna Wintour – as a CEO of the business that is the periodic publication in her charge, her primary focus should be in increasing revenues. And it appears that she has been making terrible executive decisions.

The advertisers are interested in the number of eyes that will see their products and, like nowhere else, this book is judged by its cover: if they believe (whether right or wrong – doesn’t matter) that the celebrity featured on the cover will attract more readers, they will be fighting for the commercial space. Thus, Lady Gaga makes sense, so does Beyonce. Kristen Stewart while The Twilight was still a work-in-progress was an excellent business choice, now – not so much.

So, it’s a total mystery to me as a revenue-conscious CFO, why would Anna Wintour cancel Miley Cyrus’s December cover, while apparently “chasing” Lena Dunham for the January one. Let see: One is an international mega star who at her “mature” age of 21 is worth $150 million made primarily by her multi-platinum album sales and sold-out concerts (truth be told, I’m getting nauseous writing about it, but money talks). And the other one? A tiny auteur of a tiny movie with a tiny furniture that led to a tiny show.

Oh, don’t tell me it’s because of the “wrong message!” A fully clothed girl pretends to be sexual with a man on stage as a joke and that’s appalling? Wait a minute! Isn’t the other one is actually stark naked in most episodes of her show, frequently rubbing her bare vagina against her male co-star (for the sake of the show’s “emotional realism,” of course)? Ah, but over 10 million people watched MTV VMA – Miley made a big splash! An orthodox catholic priest Sinead O’Connor voiced her scorn all the way from her rural Ireland. So, the editor-in-chief chickened out! On the other hand, the last episode of Girls was seen by 830 thousand people – that’s safe. Well, the numbers speak for themselves – bad executive decisions all around, Anna Wintour, and skinny or fat makes no difference.

4. Cool-headed and reasonable, but unfortunately overly optimistic people. They understand very well what Lena Dunham is, how she came about, where her interests lie, and how much value her work has. Yet, they convinced themselves that the adoring people will eventually come around to their side, shed the blinds, and realize that they’ve had a temporary brain lock, or, at the very least, will get bored of the emptiness and repetitiveness. They believe that, just like much lauded by hipster media back in 2007 Diablo Cody (one of the 50 smartest people in Hollywood at the time, no less!), she will disappear into the mass of forgotten washouts.

Uh-uh, my friends! Lena is not going anywhere.

In the nepotism ridden Tinseltown Diablo Cody’s momentary success was a rare case of an outsider’s rise. She surprised herself with that ascent as much as she did the entertainment industry. Standing there with the damn statue in her hand she was speechless – she knew it was all about the hype and that she didn’t really deserve the Oscar (Ratatouille, not Juno, was supposed to win that year).

Have you watched Lena accepting her big and small awards? Have you seen her in interviews and in photo ops? There is an unmistakable sense of entitlement and belonging in her every word and move. She is gleeful. It’s not about deserving it for her. She knows she was born for this.

5. Confused liberal hipsters in a tireless search for social rebels and antiheros. They looked at Lena’s naked body and let themselves to be fooled into thinking, “That girl’s got balls; this is a feminist statement.” They truly believe that she is the “voice of her generation;” that she influences people (at least according to 2013 Time’s list). Moreover, they convinced themselves that Lena Dunham’s main human and artistic purpose is to fight their holy war for the right to be who they are and how they look. (Never mind that this representative sample is limited strictly to white, urban, college grads.)

These people are very disappointed. They feel like their idol has fallen. In their ardent fervor of feminist puritanism, they are convinced that the right thing to do for their “spokesperson” should have been to say to the devil-woman Wintour, “Thanks, but no thanks. You can shove your glamorous magazine and its cover up your skinny ass.” And they write about it at length: “Why Lena Dunham Should Say No to Anna Wintour,” and stuff like that.

It may be a wishful thinking on my part, but there are some signs that the size of this group of Dunham missionaries is shrinking. For examples, New York Magazine, the original (circa Spring 2012) herald of Lena Dunham’s coming as “the ballsiest,” the funniest, the most genuine, etc., etc., etc., has been absolutely silent for months about their former darling and her creations, making a single exception by placing an off-off-off-Broadway play that spoofs Girls via Little Women on the brilliant side of The Approval Matrix. Maybe some previously infatuated people start sobering up and finally realize that the only group Lena Dunham represents is herself. Who knows, of course? There may be another cover in the works.

6. Me, not surprised whatsoever. As Tyler Perry’s Madea said, “If someone shows you who they are, believe them.” (Thank you, the brilliant people who introduced me to that quote). So, when in the final scene of Tiny Furniture (Lena Dunham’s self-admitted movie about her life) she tells her real mother that she just “wants to be famous,” I heard it loud and clear. That’s the main focus, the life’s purpose.

And for the sake of achieving it, Ms. Dunham will do whatever it takes: Parody the explicitness of the true art revolutionaries by stripping in front of the camera whether it makes sense in the storytelling context or doesn’t (it actually did once – in the shower scene of Tiny Furniture); make politically correct statements, so appealing to the liberal media; pledge unyielding admiration and love to anyone who has some sort of pull. And yes, you only need to ask – she will pose for Vogue.

7. And then there is Kanye West… The poor man is terribly aggravated on account of his “friend” Anna Wintour selecting Lena Dunham for that cover instead of his Kim. He says that it’s not fair; that his Kim is “just as talented as Lena Dunham” (oh, she is, Kanye, she is – just as talented and far more popular). And by getting hysterical over this bullshit Kanye West unwittingly exposes how incredibly irrelevant the whole thing is. That’s the consideration? Lena Dunham or Kim Kardashian? That’s just funny.

Let’s keep it in perspective, people. In the grand scheme of things literally only a handful of people cares. Vogue has a circulation of 1.2 million. 1 million people follow Lena Dunham’s twitter, and apparently not all of them even watch her show (average 780,000 viewers). And yes, some of those who are aware of Lena Dunham’s existence hold media and entertainment strings in their hands. And maybe that’s all that Lena Dunham needs to be satisfied with herself, but intelligent people should know better: three months from now even the faithful perusers of Vogue will not remember who was on the cover of the January 2014 issue.

CFO Folklore: The Illusion of Irreplaceability

This is what always happens with severely responsible and talented people who take pride in the quality of their work and apply themselves hard, regardless of the rewards and recognition, material or otherwise: They do an extraordinary job in every function they are assigned, they show initiative and undertake tasks beyond their scope of responsibility, they set their own lofty goals and high performance standards, they pull off feats of creativity and miracles of ingenuity. Truly they accomplish things that no one else would in their place.

More frequently than not they don't run around screaming about their achievements – after all, they simply cannot operate any other way and they don't care that nobody asked them to be like that. They themselves know that they are the best. Plus, people around them acknowledge such efforts in one way or another – subordinates show respect, peers get testy, etc. And the bosses? They either don't notice anything, because their heads are usually up their asses, or they are too limited to appreciate the ace-level pilotage they are witnessing.

As someone afflicted by this condition, I can assert that there is nothing healthy about it. Privately wallowing in the knowledge that you are "simply the best" and that your work ethic is a cut above everyone else's, while not being adequately rewarded for your efforts, is nothing more than an addiction to one's own ego. It's vanity of the worst kind, because it violates the principles of objectivism and merit-based recognition. And, like any addiction, it is accompanied by a couple of supplemental attributes.

One of them is the inevitable development of passive-aggressive behavior: no matter how many times a person is going to say that she does it for the sake of her own self-satisfaction, something deep inside wants to be celebrated for the extraordinary abilities, efforts, and results. This secret desire is in a constant fight with an extreme dislike of boasting. Thus, the feelings and impulses get mostly suppressed and come out in the form of classic indirect hostility and resentment.

Another attribute is the illusion of irreplaceability. The tormented crazies convince themselves that without them the company will not be able to survive; that everything will fall apart and go to hell. They believe that there is no way somebody else could be found to fill their shoes. And why not? Nowadays, people like that are quite rare. It's most likely that, if an employee in question leaves on her own accord or is let go for some reason (because she becomes unaffordable or her attitude becomes unbearable), the employer will never ever have someone that good in the same position. But does it really mean that losing these truly invaluable workers is an incurable disaster? Are they really irreplaceable? Let me answer this question by doing what I frequently do – relating the readers to an example from popular culture.

In case you have not had a chance to check out the Netflix/Lionsgate's co-production Orange Is the New Black, I urge you to do so – trust me, you will not regret it. The show's creator, Jenji Kohan (widely known for her Showtime offspring, Weeds), is a member of a still rare breed of entertainment developers, who is able to focus on female characters without reducing the finished product to gender-specific genres. Orange is the New Black takes place in a women's federal prison, and its ratio of male to female characters is about 1:10. Yet, 47% of IMDb users who rated Orange is the New Black (8.5 stars overall) were males.

One of the primary characters in the first season of the show is an inmate of Russian origin, Galina "Red" Reznikov (Kate Mulgrew). This formidable woman runs… no, she rules the prison's kitchen and has an influence on pretty much the entire social canvas of the place. By the show's start she has apparently been there for years and assumed a role of a Godmother for a tight circle of her "daughters." She can be a real bitch, and a newbie should think twice before contradicting her. But the truth is she is doing a remarkable job, keeping her fellow convicts and the staff fed and even rewarded with treats under the conditions of ever-shrinking budget, broken fridge, and oppressive hostility from some nasty guards. As early as the 5th episode, it is impossible for the audience to imagine the kitchen without Red. Obviously, she herself thinks she is irreplaceable.

Guess what? Towards the end of the season, the combination of some people's foolishness and others' unsavory scheming gets her kicked off the throne and out of the kitchen. So, what happens? Do the lights go out in the mess hall forever? Do the prisoners get shipped to another facility to be fed? Nah ah! Another head cook is found right there in the general population and installed in front of the range; she brings in her own crew; the cooking continues somehow. True, there are no more yogurt favors, the menu is severely skewed towards Latin-American cuisine, and even the oatmeal comes out spicy. But the plates are not empty, people are not starving. Life goes on, while Red is driving herself insane with displacement anger.

So, the answer to the above question is: No, you are not irreplaceable. It may take a whole team of less adequate and more expensive people to pick up your tasks. And collectively they will accomplish less and it will not be brilliant, but it will be just good enough for the business to continue, at least in the short run. Let me assure you that nothing will fall apart, because doing things half-assed and with little care has become a widespread norm. Everyone accepts poor quality at a higher cost nowadays, and so will your bosses. And you, with your talents, skills and unsolicited attempts to jump over the high-standard bars, are just an ego freak.

Social Networking May Still Redeem Itself as an Instrument of Commercial Quality Control

Today, our minds automatically go to facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. when someone uses the words "social network." The Rudin/Sorkin/Fincher team made a movie about Mark "I-violate-your-constitutional-rights" Zuckerberg and used those words as a title!

And it's absolutely ridiculous, because establishing and maintaining connections with friends and "the right people" have been vital for the human species since, like, forever. Folks have always built their settlements, villages, towns, and cities with designated places for meetings. Back in the day (and I don't mean the 1980s), households accepted visitors on certain days of the week; and even on a random day one could come by and leave a calling card with the family's help. And who can deny that, ever since the first Industrial Revolution, the patterns of commercial and financial developments were determined by the who-knows-who principle. It's just that the outreach was far more limited.

Of course, the magnitude of Internet networking is breathtaking. In the early 1990s, when the Internet has connected all seven continents, the miracle of instant world-wide access to knowledge, culture, entertainment, or people was the most important and alluring aspect of this new technology for me. I still experience a thrill every time I look at this blog's dashboard and see that during the last 24 hours my posts have been read not just at home, but also in Denmark, Canada, Germany, South Africa, UK, Vietnam, Australia, Portugal, Spain, India, France, and Taiwan. I love it.

Yet, I hate facebook and Twitter. Okay, push your eyebrows back down and let me explain. I don't hate social networking per se: It's convenient to receive updates on your favorite artists and it's important for business: I've been on LinkedIn since the times it operated exclusively on the basis of professional invitations. But I abhor the contemporary "social network" phenomenon and what it represents: the unrestrained hunger for attention, the vile combination of pathological exhibitionism and a sickly kind of voyeurism; the violation of privacy and the desire to be violated. I cannot stand the stalking by exes, the spying by employers, the snooping by the government agencies – all that shit.

That said, there are some companies with one or another form of social networking at their cores, which I consider not only healthy, but also greatly important due to their positive impact on the commercial environment, especially the consumer sector. I'm not naive and I don't think that any of the entrepreneurs behind these businesses consciously elected to influence the quality of goods and services. Most likely they simply shaped their business models utilizing the exploding patterns of collective participation in the Internet experience, but in the process they unwittingly created an influential force that has a power of strengthening and weakening businesses.

In 1979, Tim and Nina Zagat started imploring their friends into scoring restaurants they visited, eventually turning their social pastime into a ranking business, which was bought by Google in 2011 for a reported $151 million. Being an old-fashioned medium from the start, however, it remained the same under the new high-tech ownership: It's still unclear how the rankings are formulated.

It was Pierre Omidyar's hobby-project turned international conglomerate with an annual revenue of $14 billion, aka eBay that pioneered the concept of building market-place reputations based on the fully-disclosed opinions of the "community members," i.e. users of the eBay services. While everyone was screaming (understandably so) that people will cheat, lie and steal, eBay founders stuck to the most fundamental of the commercial principles: in order to succeed you need to keep your ratings high, because one unresolved accusation of unsavory practices may kill your future transactions for good. It's like what G.W. Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me – you can't get fooled again."

Today, thanks to rating algorithms utilized by various online businesses, we came to rely on communal ratings and individual opinions whenever we buy electronics, computers, household appliances, books, or select entertainment on Netflix, or order food delivery on Seamless, or pick a hotel on TripAdvisor, or make decisions about telecommunications providers. Many of us not only peruse the viewpoints of others, but also actively participate in the polling process by sharing our own thoughts about this or that product, service, establishment, thus affecting a new system of commercial quality control.

It is safe to say, in my opinion, that Yelp has become a flagship of the communal marketing model. Again, not because the ideas of commercial quality control and merit-based rewards are so important to them, but for the sake of the advertising income ($138 million in 2012). Nevertheless, assessing performance and assigning rewards (aka ratings) is exactly what "yelpers" (members expressing their opinions) do.

A few unique traits place Yelp, Inc. in the avant-garde of this movement. They encompass a wide spectrum of consumer services. Right now you can find referrals on businesses in 20 main categories – from restaurants to religious organizations, further subdivided into specialties. In less than 10 years they have achieved an international magnitude. The listings are essentially combined efforts: detailed information about the business is provided by the commercial participants themselves (for a fee) and consumers supply their reviews, photos, and ratings. The search engine is geographically oriented allowing users to find what's around them on the map.

Also, Yelp, Inc. claims that they use an "aggressive" reviews filter, which rejects posts that are suspected to be biased or false. As a result, according to their public releases, about 25% of entries are being dismissed. And I can appreciate that. Like I said, rendering communal judgments on commercial establishments is a serious matter: ultimately it has a power of affecting the livelihood of individual businessmen. So, the filtering is great as long as Yelp conducts their selections, rejections, and other manipulations fairly and without prejudice.

Unfortunately, as with everything touched by greed, the communal quality control as executed by Yelp, Inc. may be seriously misused. While I was writing this piece, TypePad's "related-posts" function has presented me with a few reports (including the one attached below) accusing Yelp of manipulating reviews in exchange for business clients' participation in the site's advertising programs (you can also read about it on Wikipedia). And that's criminal. Not only because it's nothing short of blackmail, but also because, by using individual consumers' personal and freely expressed opinions in this unsavory process, Yelp corrupts the participants' intellectual property and constitutional rights. I sure as hell hope that these accusations are not true. If they are, yelpers should file a class-action suit to bar Yelp, Inc. from using their reviews as the means of racketeering.

Inside Yelp's Wasp Nest: When Social Networking Meets Extortion

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