Yelp Reviews of Religious Organizations
If you think Yelp is bad, you’re wrong. It’s good. You can browse reviews by topic, and buried deep, deep down is “Religious Organizations”. No longer are you bound to complain just to your neighbor if the priest gave a sermon that made you uncomfortable, now you can warn any would-be parishioner who looks up Yelp reviews before they attend a church, which by the way is definitely normal and not deranged.

This person has 4 total reviews, and three of them are churches. The other one is a 3-star rating of a pizza joint. Personally, I wish this person had written more about Lutherans.
Yelp is for two things only: bragging about your worldliness, and exerting any kind of control or influence for people who feel totally dis-empowered by modernity. Yelp reviewers may seem cruel, petty, pointless, and self-obsessed, but in reality their meaningless whining is a symptom of the dehumanization of technology. The only freedom, and it is illusory, in post-human America is writing a review of anything and everything before you’re thrown into the maw of the machine.

Yeah, imagine that. Weird that you need to go inside of a building to see the inside of a building. I can imagine being upset by this. I once spent an hour screaming and crying outside of a music venue because they wouldn’t let me inside just to look during a concert. I once threw a fit so loud I was arrested because a nearby hospital wouldn’t let me in to look at the patients.

This is a very nice review written by a person who should probably read about what star ratings mean.

Without fail, reviews of religious organizations who say they’re not reviewing the religion are in fact reviewing the religion. This is a review of Catholicism and its history in the 20th century written by a Baptist, which rules. But this guy really buried the lede — this review is about how he has a friend from Red Communist Chinese Pinko Commie Chinese China, and how this godless Communist thought the Catholic church is bad. I don’t quite know whether or not China’s state ownership has any bearing on the church, but regardless, the reviewer’s prop friend now thinks the Catholics are a bunch of money-grubbing hell preachers. And can you blame him, this reviewer asks? Attend a Protestant church, a collection of churches famous for being free of greed and sex scandals, and quit associating with these perverted bachelors.
But why restrict ourselves to Christendom?

A two star hit because this Buddhist temple did not feature a cartoonish old Asian man. Honest, but fair. I hope the reviewer’s journey into the mysterious orient was not otherwise impeded. The ellipses can only mean the reviewer stopped to stare off into the distance, meaningfully.

“Mad about free stuff” is my favorite genre of Yelp reviews. The reviewer was mad that he or she was asked to donate to the Buddhist temple, mad that the movie was paused, and didn’t like the movie. This individual has discriminating taste and will not be satisfied with less! The reviewer even had the grace to end it on a high note. “Maybe I shouldn’t be a shithead throughout the entire review,” they thought. No. Wrong. Never stop being a shithead. It’s your God-given right to be a shithead, to never stop being dissatisfied, to simper, whine, fuss, pout, groan, and mewl like a newborn. Your opinion matters, and with it you can reshape the world into your liking, like a god with a taste for sushi, but not from that one place where the server had an attitude.
