Blimey, I'm a top Amazon reviewer!

I've had various lives posting reviews on Amazon. I had loads on there once but I stopped doing it for a while and when I came back I'd forgotten who I'd been and so I couldn't log on to write more. Neither could I find my reviews so that was all a bit mysterious. So I started again and trundled along for a year or so posting when the mood grabbed me, but then amazon deleted a whole heap of my reviews for no reason I could see and I gave up again. Recently I started banging on about stuff on there again. For the last year I've drifted up the rankings to about 480 or so. But then to my head-scratching bemusement I've just been on amazon and found that they've changed the ranking method. And I'm now No 31.

I'm sure that's a mistake and I'll drop like a stone, but it amused me to see that for today I'm a top 50 reviewer. After reading amazon's explanation I think I understand what they've done. The plan is to stop the organized gang culture that was doing so much to destroy the lives of decent reviewers who want nothing more than to post their reviews in peace and without fear of intimidation. I've seen how these amazon review bully boys operate and it's scary stuff. I once posted a review on a book that had just come out. I was one of the first to review. I went back five minutes later to review my review for spelling mistakes only to find I'd slipped off the front page because someone else had written a review and in five minutes it'd gathered 18 positives while somehow I'd gathered 5 negatives. And that brutal and unprovoked assault doomed my erudite and witty review to the unseen pages while the bully boy's feeble insights stayed on the front page gathering acclaim...

Competitive review writing is a cut-throat business that's not for faint hearted scribes, but hopefully the changes will help to wipe out this menace and make the mean streets of the information superhighway safer for everyone. Although having shot up the charts I have a horrible feeling I'm going to get dragged in to working out how I can keep that ranking!