“Well, I was recently thinking about it a bit and there’s actually a really easy way to fuck with the Godazon system and amass a bountiful fortune. You just need to gather a large enough group of like-minded profiteering individuals to take part in this sort of system and you could very easily build an Akashic Records empire. It wouldn’t even take that many people. A thousand people would probably be far more than enough to achieve this. You could easily become a force that no small-timer could ever oppose on Godazon.”

“First, you set the price of the Akashic Records you’re selling on Godazon to the absolute minimum of 99 godents. Then you send out a short summary of your Akashic Records to the group to read through which will give them an idea of what it’s about. This way, they don’t have to read through the entire thing. The overall story could be complete shit, but the summary by itself could make it sound a lot better than it really is.”

“Now, you can offer to pay everyone in the group the price of the Akashic Records and in exchange, they will write up their own review based on the summary. Everyone who is part of this group would be individuals who also publish Akashic Records to Godazon. Not everyone will review every single story though as it would become suspicious if there was too much overlap in reviewers on these publications in a very short period of time. Among the thousand people in the group, you only really need a hundred of them to review it. Though, there will be people among them who will be told to only leave a rating rather than a public review.”

“Each reviewer would send you a copy of their review and you can suggest possible edits to it to make the reviews feel more fleshed out. Once that is done, the person will purchase the publication with their own money first and post their review. This way they will be counted as a verified purchaser. You would then receive the receipt confirmation from them showing their purchase and you would pay them the cost of the purchase through GodPal, or if you want to be more discreet, you’d make the payments to them through crypto instead.”

“All of that certainly is true, Author. It would be pretty easy to accomplish a scheme like this. With the other members of the groups being fellow publishers, to them, this sort of group is all too beneficial. They’d be more than fine making the investment of getting their account to the point where they meet the criteria required to leave reviews on the platform.”

“Precisely. If things ended at just this level, that would be all fine and dandy, but things don’t simply end there. The plot can thicken even more. The rabbit hole has the potential to extend further than most would ever imagine.”

“While they can leave very positive reviews, they can also flood competitors with unverified low scoring reviews and ratings as well. Though it would be best to make some of those lower scoring ones verified purchases. Like this, they could easily squash out their foolish small-time competitors operating all on their own. They could push all their group’s publications to the very top of the charts across many different categories giving their publications the most exposure while squashing the competition like bugs.”

“Yes, they certainly could, Author. But the most frightening thing would be if they turned it into an Akashic Records empire as you mentioned. With the assistance of Godazon Prime, it is but all too easy to accomplish as well. It would effectively become a two-step pyramid scheme, one which pays out to each individual what their publication earns in royalties overall, minus some ‘administration fees’ for the one organizing all of this of course. If they were to use a single account, act as a publishing company, and publish for those individuals in the group under their pen names, the overlapping reviewers may just be seen as loyal fans who enjoy that overall publisher’s releases when in fact they are all actually part of this one collective group.”

“They could even mark both high and low star reviews as helpful in mass and the general public would be none the wiser. With the way Godazon is set up, pushing the most ‘helpful’ reviews to the top, this makes the public more prone to buying into these reviews and believe others really think this way about the publication as well. If this group really wants to, they can easily take the most critical review spots by gaming this sort of broken system so they can sugar coat their words for those in their group despite it being allegedly ‘critical’ of the publication. While they may be excessively harsh and untruthful toward competitors.”

“Even though 1-star reviews can be viewed on their own with the sorting system, most consumers have shorter attention spans and just pay attention to the over-glorified most helpful ones that show up first. Godazon thought they were fixing a problem by introducing the helpful system, but they instead just made it all the easier to game it.”

“But now that I think about it, God, isn’t this exactly what traditional publishers have effectively become these days anyway? Because they’ve realized how much power they hold, they can easily accomplish this exact sort of scheme. Essentially, if a small-timer wants to make it anywhere in this world where giants have long established themselves, isn’t their only choice to join them in these sorts of dirty underhanded tactics?”

“Sadly, that is the cold hard truth, Author. Once a small-timer catches the eye of a big fish, that big fish will set out to sneakily squash and gradually destroy that individual over time to make them give up and get out of the game. They might start with an average review to make it less suspect and avoid raising any brows, but they will gradually work their way up by periodically sprinkling in even lower reviews until all the person receives are low ratings.”

“The person wouldn’t have a clue either as to whether anything suspicious is going on. They would even just think it’s only natural. They might think their work only appealed to a small niche group, but that it didn’t appeal to a larger mainstream audience. They would be lead to believe the initial readers who read it were easy graders or that they were just trying to be nice, but now that it was picking up traction a bit, the more critical people were taking notice of it and deciding to give their two cents as to why that high rating was nonsense or bullshit.”

“The publishers are all too aware of just how well these sorts of tactics work because they have all the stats. Regardless of whether someone enjoys something or not, what is typically seen is that only one in one hundred people that make a purchase will bother to leave a review or rating.” 

“They know when people see something has a very high rating, their interest may be piqued as a result of the hype, but once they actually take a look they may find it’s just not for them. Those sorts of people may be under the impression that they’re just the odd one out. Some might actually think there’s something fishy going on with the ratings, but more often than not, people will prefer to think ‘oh, I’m unique, I just like different things than the pleb masses.’ They then opt to not leave a review because they don’t want to be mean or something. Even if they did leave a review, they know they will only subject themselves to being bullied into submission by the vocal greater majority.”

“However, when these sorts of people see there aren’t that many reviews, they feel they can give their two cents without worrying about being stoned to death. Because of this sort of herd mentality, those who game the system gain the most while those who don’t and stick to being stupidly honest only suffer endless hardships. But that’s life, Author. You either join them, or you get beaten into the ground. The world has always operated on majority rules. Unless you sell your soul to the devil known as the system, you will never get anywhere in life.”

“Yeah, I know. But I still have no interest in that sort of thing.”