I recently went on a very stupid little mini mission: I tried to hide as many user reviews that I could. I have grown sick of seeing a random person’s review of books, movies, video games, and whatever else. Some of this is nostalgia—I miss the days of just gambling on something that looked cool—but it’s also practical, to a brain like mine, user reviews push me to want to optimize my entertainment experience, which in turn makes me indecisive.

When everyone can write a review about anything, those reviews often become meaningless. Take a look at an average user score for the majority of media and you’ll find it averaging out over time to a 3.5, or a 70. Some media rises above this, of course, hitting universal acclaim, but it’s rare, and usually a sort of snowball effect anyway, where acclaim begets acclaim.

This might sound silly, and it is. But at the same time, these subtle little unwanted infiltrations into our brains is annoying. That movie you love, that you just happened to search online for? Actually everyone hated it. That video game you thought was boring? Turns out it has a 4.4/5 average review score. Your favorite album by that band? It’s everyone else’s least favorite.

If I search for critic’s reviews, I want to find them. I do not want to stumble upon some random person’s opinion!

Not all user reviews are bad. They can be useful with clothes, at least in how they fit. “True to size” seems like it could be helpful, but in reality “true” and “size” are both arguable terms that end up being meaningless when it comes to fit. Sites that allow reviewers to include a height and weight can be helpful to decide on fit, but the intrusiveness of that ask combined with online stores’ awful privacy practices means some people are understandably skeptical to provide that information.

I have occasionally found user reviews helpful for finding repair people on Yelp, but I’ve just as often been let down, and ultimately it feels like as much of a crapshoot as finding a number in the phone book.

Sometimes user reviews can be helpful with electronics or other purchases, but it’s much harder to quantify, especially if you’re looking at whatever the meta product of the day is, say the pair of headphones that Wired, Wirecutter, and RTings all seem to agree on. Here, there are often just a zillion reviews saying the same thing, then a quarter zillion being contrarian for the sake of it. Where user reviews would be most useful, such as big ticket items like stoves, fridges, or cars, they barely exist on storefronts, since models change year to year. Go to Reddit, for that.

When I accepted this stupid, silly little mission, I wasn’t sure there would be tools to help me along my path. But I found some.

I’ve landed a couple browser extensions (Letterboxd Reviews Remover and SteamBuster), some Ublock Origin custom filters, and straight up DNS blocking certain websites (Goodreads, Rotten Tomatoes) on my Pi-Hole. Letterboxd Review’s Remover is a good example of what I’d like to see elsewhere—where a click of the button reveals reviews, if I choose to do so, but they’re hidden by default.

What I’d really like is the option on websites to hide these officially. I do not need to see someone’s review of a national park on Google Maps. I do not need to know what someone I do not know thought about Gravity’s Rainbow. The modern internet pushes people to review everything, all the time, which pushes people to optimize everything they do, making it nearly impossible to stumble into something truly special.