I started to become conscious of the phenomenon a few months ago. Now I see it everywhere. I look at a movie poster and it’s full of 4 star reviewer ratings. I pick up my music magazine and every new album seems to get 4 stars. Everything, it seems, gets 4 stars.

So I got the SI research team to dig a bit deeper. Regarding my music magazines, it turns out I was wrong. Only two-thirds of albums get 4 stars. Nearly all of the rest get 3. The net effect, however, is precisely the same: the reviews tell me absolutely nothing about what I should consider spending my disposable income on this month. Same with the film I might go and see. Or the hotel I choose to stay in. When everything is about the same ‘pretty good’ standard as everything else, reviews have become meaningless.

Maybe that’s the point?

But then again, what if it isn’t? Humans are natural ‘satisficers’. When faced with a problem – like what music to buy – we more often than not allow ourselves to fall on a solution that does the job we want satisfactorily. But we’re also incorrigible changers. We love change. We especially love change when we get bored with the status quo.

And when the status quo is 4-star everything, we all become bored.

Now one possible response to this boredom is that I go on ebay and click any old ‘buy it now’ button and see what happens. Like a game of Russian Roulette. Only one in which every chamber in the gun contains the same 4 star bullet.

Which then lead me to think perhaps we need to dig a bit deeper and see why society is on this 4 star trajectory. Strictly speaking, I should probably say ‘Western society’, although in my experience, most other parts of the globe seem to be on the same basic path.

A Perception Map seemed to be a good next step. So we set about compiling a list of reasons why the migration to 4 stars is happening. Here’s what we found:

Everything gets 4 stars because:

1. Everything is (perceived to be) getting better
2. Producers increasingly all learn a success formula
3. More mediocre (1, 2 and 3 star) solutions quickly get eliminated from the market, or never make it to market in the first place
4. Critics are increasingly expected to ‘play nice’ (and in today’s social media world, we’re all critics)
5. There are too many critics, and so its always possible for producers to find a critical mass of reviewers prepared to say 4 star things
6. Rate of content production decreases and so an incredible amount of content gets created, so there’s lots of noise and consequently the 5 star cream never gets a chance to rise
7. Audiences that have never experienced (or can’t remember) great content, don’t know what it looks, sounds or feels like
8. Negative criticism is viewed as socially unacceptable
9. More and more new content suffers from ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ Syndrome

And here’s what happens when we link those comments using the ‘leads to’ question:

At first sight this picture doesn’t seem to look so bad. Everything seems to lead to things getting better. But scrape beneath the surface by walking yourself around the loop and what becomes clear is that this apparent virtuous cycle is actually a slow but invidious death spiral. Everything is perceived to be getting better, but actually isn’t because nobody dares say anything negative. Least of all that we might all increasingly be finding ourselves surrounded by 4 star naked Emperors. If we’re going to escape, someone needs to solve this contradiction:

 The trick to finding 5 star talent, to creating 5 star music seems to come down to our ability to create a community of critics that can say things that spark artists to do better while at the same time being perceived as playing nice.

Or maybe forget the nice part? Maybe the best way to be nice is to tell people the uncomfortable truth?

Sounds like a job for Tough Generation X Nomads. Ready or not, come 2022, that’s what society will get. (Evil grin.)

In the meantime, we need to learn more subtle ways of playing nice and not playing nice. But, hey. Wait a minute. Maybe that’s exactly what a 4 star review has become? Maybe the critics of the world are indeed sending artists everywhere a covert message: a 4 star review is the new mediocre. Maybe its real message is ‘if you’re really an artist, you’re not supposed to settle for using the 4 star formula.’