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Not a lot of people are aware of this, but I\u2019ve been writing reviews of things on\u00a0Yelp.com<\/a>\u00a0for like five years now. \u00a0Primarily restaurants and the occasional business, but for the most part, it\u2019s something I\u2019ve done that conveniently acts as something of a chronicling of my dining experiences in my travels or general living, while indulging in my general enjoyment of writing.<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously, there\u2019s often discussion about the ethics of review sites like Yelp and how there are always conspiracies of sites holding small businesses hostage with bad reviews, small businesses altering their behavior at the knowledge of known reviewers, etc, etc., but all that stuff doesn\u2019t concern me, nor do I really care about any of it.\u00a0 For the longest time, I\u2019ve been content to keep my Yelp identity hidden, behind a faceless avatar, that wrote reviews of places completely anonymously, save for the customary first name and last initial.\u00a0 Something about doing it like that made me self-righteously believe that there was more integrity in doing it that way, as I thought those people who revealed themselves and under the banner of \u201cElite status\u201d felt subliminal pressure to pander from time to time.<\/span><\/p>\n I also thought Yelp was kind of cliquey in some regards, no more apparent than when someone writes a review of a place that\u2019s literally no more than the phrase \u201comg I really luv this place<\/em>\u00a0<3 <3 <3\u00a0!!!!<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 and it\u2019s nominated as a city-wide \u201creview of the day,\u201d as voted for by local peers.\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t seem like there\u2019s much integrity in \u201creviews\u201d like such.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n But with the coercion of friends, the notion of simply doing something different with my life, and the idea that it was an opportunity to socialize, meet people, and get occasional free shit, I crossed the line of anonymity and put a face to my name.\u00a0 Achieving Elite status was pretty simple, as all it takes is endorsement from an existing Elite, and my fairly consistent reviewing activity was sufficient enough to make it so, not to mention I had an outstanding invite from the former community manager.<\/span><\/p>\n Whatever though, now that we\u2019ve caught up on my history with Yelp, over the weekend, I went to my very first Yelp event.\u00a0 It just so happened to be the supposed largest one of the year, held at one of the more famous venues in Downtown Atlanta.<\/span><\/p>\n To cut to the chase, I thought it was, by all definition of the phrase,\u00a0meh<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n Typically, I don\u2019t really like to resort to stuff like internet slang, and I could have just as easily used terms as \u201calright,\u201d or \u201cokay,\u201d but this was one of those instances where the phrase has apparently become so commonplace and engrained in the vernacular of the crowds I hang out with, that\u00a0meh<\/em>\u00a0was basically the first thought that popped into my head when I try to consolidate my feelings and thoughts into minimal words.<\/span><\/p>\n To the credit of Yelp and the event itself, it was undoubtedly impressive, clearly well executed, and seemingly pretty smoothly run.\u00a0 But it\u2019s the things they can\u2019t necessarily control, like the poor weather, and the societal norms of people cliquing together in their small micro-groups that don\u2019t interact with those in their own mini cliques, that kind of defeat the purpose of gatherings that make the event as a whole feel kind of meh.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019d be willing to bet that my feelings might differ had the circumstances been different in the fact that maybe I knew more people going into the event, maybe if the event didn\u2019t allow for +2 guests, so that I could actually meet other people that actually wrote shit on Yelp, as opposed to being the tagger-alongs in for the free food, drink and swag.<\/span><\/p>\n But anyway, I got a flask, which was undoubtedly the coolest piece of swag there was, so I\u2019m happy with that.\u00a0 Admittedly, I\u2019d probably be pretty pissed though if I didn\u2019t get a flask, while people along for the ride mooched them all previously; I mean, I\u2019ve written over 200 reviews of places all across the country, and I\u2019m not\u00a0trying<\/em>\u00a0to sound like I\u2019m pulling rank, but shit I think I actually deserve my free stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n Back to the event though, it was impressively run, no doubt.\u00a0 Numerous local businesses set up sample stations, and there were an impressive number of businesses also there to give out free stuff.\u00a0 There was a lot of free food, and even more free booze, and it\u2019s safe to say that if I had a designated driver, I probably would have gotten drunk, for sure.\u00a0 Tito\u2019s Handmade Vodka, I really liked in cocktails; a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n The one thing that I was not really keen on was the lines for the troika of food vendors in the basement, that was about as neatly organized as the bedroom of a teenager.\u00a0 Some ropes, or even some painters tape on the ground to show some order in how a line should flow would have helped immensely, and not caused the agonizing log jams of people that teetered on hostility at times, for what amounted to people waiting for some Indian street food.\u00a0 Needless to say, an Indian sloppy joe, SmashBurger fries and a doughnut were not really worth the 60 minutes standing in a horrendously unorganized line of people.<\/span><\/p>\n As I alluded, I also thought that there were simply too many people at the event.\u00a0 At the same time, depending on where in the Tabernacle you went, it may not have seemed like there were enough people in the venue.\u00a0 The bottom line is that people came for free booze and swag and food over anything else, like the music any performers.\u00a0 In a sense, I came for the free food and booze too, but I honestly wouldn\u2019t have minded meeting new people, but this is where the whole thing of people coming with close confidants in the first place means they don\u2019t have to really feel like they want to meet new people either.<\/span><\/p>\n One funny observation I had were the large contingent of Asian people present at the event.\u00a0 Now one other reason that I was always reluctant to fully open up to Yelp was that there was often this stereotype that Yelp was pretty predominantly Asian users, and me being the Twinkie-banana U.S.-born Asian-American that really tries to go against the grain and not do what other Asians do, the fact that I wrote on Yelp in the first place was already like a strike one against me.<\/span><\/p>\n But to a degree, perception is reality, and there really were a lot of Asian folks present at this event.\u00a0 And this is where it occurred to me that it really makes me wonder if their entire end game to being Yelpers in the first place stems from the fact that Elites are simply privy to free stuff periodically, because as I\u2019ve witnessed myself, and in myself, is that Asians\u00a0love\u00a0<\/em>free stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n Case in point was that I happened to get to the event somewhat early; being such an Elite noob meant getting there actually close to the start time, instead of remotely trying to be fashionably late.\u00a0 That being said, I saw pretty early on tables and tables of free samples and swag being given away.\u00a0 Sure, I took a sample of jerky or some pretzels, and indulged in them fairly immediately, because I was hungry, but after the first hour of the event, all those tables were completely barren.\u00a0 Subsequently, the event now had vastly more Asian people present, all of them carrying the complimentary swag bags given out in one of the suites, and all of their bags visibly weighted down.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m not saying they were the ones primarily responsible for the fast disappearance of free samples, but all I could really think of was a story of how my mom and aunt dragged me to a Macy\u2019s department store, because Macy\u2019s had a class action lawsuit settlement that resulted in them giving away cosmetics until they reached a particular dollar amount.\u00a0 When we got to the Macy\u2019s in old\u00a0Springfield Mall<\/a>, lines sprawled out in like six different directions, and 90% of the people in the lines were all Asians.<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know the details that spawned Macy\u2019s getting sued in the first place, but I have a hard time believing that it was Asian immigrant women feeling cheated about wages or falsely advertised quantities, but you might be inclined to think so, considering 90% of people coming for \u201creparation\u201d were Asian immigrant women.<\/span><\/p>\n It turned out that both my mom and my aunt found out about \u201cfree makeup at Macy\u2019s,\u201d without even knowing why it was even happening, though an online message board frequented by other Korean women.\u00a0 Free shit at Macy\u2019s, don\u2019t ask questions.<\/span><\/p>\n Needless to say, in spite of the implications that it was really supposed to be one per customer, it didn\u2019t stop my mom and aunt and the hundreds of other Asian women from hopping from line to line, attempting to hoard as many free samples as they could.\u00a0 And much to my mother\u2019s horror, she became the unfortunate pariah out of all the Asian women present to get recognized by a Macy\u2019s employee after a shift rotation put this employee back in front of my mom in a different line, to receive a public admonishment and refusal to give another free sample.<\/span><\/p>\n Asian people love free shit.\u00a0 Even if it means one out of every three present actually has to exert some effort to make it happen occasionally, like at a Yelp event.<\/span><\/p>\n In conclusion, the Yelp Elite event was alright.\u00a0 Meh.\u00a0 I think I\u2019d have to go to more smaller events and get to know more people within the community before I could really fully appreciate an event on a larger scale like this one, but I\u2019m certainly not closing the door on it, after the hassle it took to get me to walk through it in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n Besides, if for anything at all, free shit.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not a lot of people are aware of this, but I\u2019ve been writing reviews of things on\u00a0Yelp.com\u00a0for like five years now. \u00a0Primarily restaurants and the occasional business, but for the most part, it\u2019s something I\u2019ve done that conveniently acts as something of a chronicling of my dining experiences in my travels or general living, while … Continue reading Thoughts on my first Yelp Elite event<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,56,15,156],"class_list":["post-39559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-booze","tag-food","tag-og","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39561,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39559\/revisions\/39561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}