Recently, Benn Jordan, the well-liked if sometimes controversial YouTuber, announced that he was never doing another review video. His reason was simple: the environment was so toxic, and he was being attacked in so many ways, that it was simply no fun to do any more... and why should he do something for no benefit and no profit if it wasn't fun?

I dropped a note in the comments section for that video. What I ended up publishing was just a few lines – basically agreeing with him that focusing on an enriching process was key to enjoying the trip from Point A to Point B, and parenthetically thanking him for having a copy of my book clearly visible over his shoulder in the video.

But as is common for me, those few lines were actually left after I wrote a very long piece, reread it, realized that the Comments section of a YouTube video was no place for it, and cut it all out to use elsewhere. It sat open on my desktop for several days, and I added to it instead of doing real work... and now I think I'd better get it out there before it ripens to the point where it draws flies.

***

Looking back from 2023, I've got more years behind me than ahead of me now, and I am grateful that I got to spend over 20 of those years in the Editorial offices of a well-respected music technology magazine that was printed on real paper and purchased for real money. I wrote dozens of product reviews and edited hundreds more, and for every one of them, I knew I would be held accountable for fair and accurate reporting – both by the readers and by the manufacturers who didn't buy ads in the magazine.

Wait, what? The ones who didn't buy ads? Yes! For every company that did buy ads, we reviewed products from a dozen others in every issue. Maybe they were too small to afford ads as yet. Maybe they used to buy ads and stopped. Maybe they were interested in doing it someday. Maybe they would never do it at all. But every single one of them got accountability and fact check certification, every time. 

If there were legitimate problems with how a review was researched or carried out, they knew we'd make things right before we went to press. If there were legitimate issues with the product, they knew we'd call them on it, but that we'd be clear and diplomatic about it. It didn't matter if we never saw a dollar of ad revenue from them: they knew we would treat them fairly, openly, and with respect. That was a foregone conclusion for companies that bought ads, but it was true of everyone – even for companies that hated a review enough to pull their advertising to "punish" us.

Our reputation was our bond, built up over decades of hard work – and that was how it had to be, when every word we wrote cost money to print and more money to buy and read. It took weeks to do properly, but that was OK, because it took weeks to assemble and publish an issue of a magazine. While January was on the newsstands, February was already on press, March was being assembled, and most importantly, reviews scheduled for April, May, and June were all out for fact check. 

I remember asking for four weeks to review a very new and in-demand piece of gear, and having the agency representing the manufacturer say, "Four WEEKS? All the other magazines got a unit on Monday and turned around reviews by Friday!"

"And let's see how those other reviews read versus ours," was my response.

I don't like to think of myself as a vindictive guy, but I did get a chuckle from the reviews that came out two months before ours, all of which were superficial, mostly composed of marketing language from the product releases, and sometimes glaringly in error.

I did it right and I made my authors do it right. It was necessary to do it right because print was forever – but it was possible to do it right because print didn't demand turnover in a matter of days or even hours.

I'm grateful that I had that opportunity to build up that reputation for myself over all those years, because when I look at how things are done these days, I despair. I just fucking despair.

For every really solid source of online information, well researched and accountable and trustworthy, there are literally hundreds of others that are total garbage. Everywhere you look, there's confirmation bias, siloing, faulty review procedures, errors in reporting (and basic logic!), and underlying it all, driving it all, is an audience ravenous for content but unable to process it effectively – unable to recognize content that is biased, incompletely researched, or just plain wrong, as long as it adheres to the opinions people have already. Or at least stokes people up for a good fight.

That doesn't matter in the end, though. What does matter is more clicks, more hits, more impressions, more subscribers, more likes, more shares – everything else has to get shoved to the side, including pretty much every aspect of a quality review. With its ever-accelerating rush to stay relevant before the next guy takes away your views, this infernal machine chews up and spits out journalists with the potential to make a real difference; it just grinds them down until they realize that it's quit or die.

That's why Benn Jordan quit. He was tired of being doxxed, of receiving death threats (including some directed to his physical address), of having his feeds hacked, and of constantly being insulted and misrepresented for doing what was supposed to be informative, helpful, and above all, fun.

That's why I (largely) quit. These days, there are only two places where I write reviews: print magazines whose creators I know and respect, and MPN GearLabs. In both cases, I can work at my own pace, deliver my results, handle criticisms in a rational way, and uphold my standards... which are a damn sight higher than those of a lot of the influencers out there.

I'm particularly fond of GearLab, because if someone questions my work (either in a spirit of desire to learn more or in a spirit of challenge), I can re-examine what I've written and answer them in kind. If someone's polite and cogent, I can give them a polite and cogent answer, including correcting errors I might have made. If someone wants to be a piece of shit, I can wipe them off my shoe and flush them. And in the end, hopefully people learn something worthwhile, before we move on to the next bit of enlightenment in a darkening world.

***

I've got no idea if you'll ever read this, Benn, but if you do, know this: you fought the good fight, you got kicked around for it, and you walked away rather than get kicked any more.

You could be chided for that if you were backing down on something like equal rights, environmental stewardship, religious freedom, or social equity... but for writing reviews of synth gear? PsshhhhhhyeahRIGHT.

Go back to having fun making music, man – and if we ever get a chance to meet in person, I'll happily buy you a couple of drinks and we can sit around and swap stories about how deservedly forgettable some people are. 

mike