Five Star Giver

I’m a high-level Google Maps user. I know most of you don’t know or care, but that’s my secret flex. I’ve submitted many reviews to Google Maps—two hundred and forty-one to be exact. That’s probably more than any of you reading this have done.

For some reason, this thought crossed my mind this evening. And I felt compelled to write about it. It doesn’t affect your life, or mine. In fact, it doesn’t even matter if I’m a high-level Google Maps reviewer. Well, it used to – I remember many years ago, they used to give rewards for being a top contributor.

I’m not sure if they still do – I haven’t gotten any rewards in recent years, but those rewards did inspire me to continue leaving reviews. The first reward was an RM40 Zalora voucher, which I spent on a wallet. The second one was a redBus voucher which I never claimed (I had nowhere I wanted to travel to by bus that year).

I bet most of you didn’t even know they gave rewards

After that, the rewards stopped coming. Maybe I fell off. Washed.

I realized there’s a flaw in my reviewing—not the content of the review itself, but the fact that I tend to leave positive reviews. Most of the time, I leave reviews because I enjoyed myself and not to complain about the venue.

I grew up with the mentality of “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” Especially in public for everyone to see. A quick Google search shows that this saying is most commonly associated with Thumper from Bambi. I must have watched the film too many times as a child.

See, you learned something new today

Perhaps I learned something new today about myself. Maybe that’s where all my positivity stems from. This one quote I unconsciously absorbed and turned into my personality.

I believe that if you have the energy to complain, you have the energy to fix a problem. If you don’t want to fix it, you enjoy complaining more than solving the problem.

But leaving negative reviews is doing something about it – I would be saving other people (who believe me) a trip from a bad experience. So maybe that’s why I do leave negative reviews – sometimes. However, they are far and few in between.

I leave negative reviews for places that absolutely deserve them. If they left a really bad impression, I will call it out.

Once in a while, I submit a middling review for a place, which I feel makes no difference—it doesn’t move the scales. It doesn’t generate impact. So I tend to avoid doing those. If I don’t review a place, it’s because I didn’t like (or dislike) it enough.

I leave good reviews because I want more people to patron a place and the owners to succeed. Fortunately, I’m not a huge influencer so my words don’t drive flocks of people to restaurants and cause them to overcrowd (another problem I’d like to write about one day – the negative influence of foodies).

My food pictures suck, but that’s okay, I don’t think people care that much as long as you show them the food. I recall one of my most popular photos of a friend at a restaurant (LOL).

So what I usually talk about? The taste of the food, the service, the value for money, the crowd (if it’s a noticeable thing – i tend not to enjoy places that get too crowded), booking requirements (if necessary), and sometimes parking issues if it’s an issue. I would say I’m pretty fair.

11(3)34 again, I’m not even trying

I don’t believe there’s a point to this article other than being able to flex my Google Maps level and to let any restaurant owners who stumble upon this blog post know: if you’re looking for a high-level Google Maps user to review your restaurant, reach out to me and kick start my journey of turning into a person I despise food critic.

Who knows, this could be the start of something amazing. Heck yea.