Hunting and firearms equipment reviews and articles are weird. Some organizations out there shill products unabashedly: overlooking huge product flaws, ignoring better competing products on the market in their articles, and painting everything with a big, positive brush. Even worse, some people out there, mostly owners of said products, eat those articles up, bathing in the affirmation that they bought the right product. I’d like to say, for the record: some products suck and nothing is perfect! I can do that, because I have a day job and my next meal is not going to depend on this website getting advertisers. I won’t shit on products just for fun, subjecting equipment to extreme abuse that it wasn’t designed to handle, but I don’t overlook poor design either. Rather, I’d consider the application of the product, as designed.
Application
I truly believe that the product’s application dictates how it should be reviewed. I recommend the Savage Axis as an inexpensive beginner’s rifle. The stock’s crappy, and the trigger kinda sucks on the V1, and that’s OK for the price point. I wouldn’t put a Browning X-Bolt up against it, because the X-Bolt is better in every way, except price. I don’t recommend the Remington 770 because: the bolt sheath is craptastic and no other rifles in this price point use one, the magazine is a piece of shit, the stock swivels will break off if you put too much pressure on them, the bolt stop is not good, and the QC is hit and MISS because I couldn’t even chamber a round in mine due to shit headspace. These are all attributes on this rifle that I stack up to paint a picture of why I think other rifles are a better choice at the price point. Yet, if you check out my article on the 770 or my YouTube video on the 770, you’ll see an overwhelming majority of commenters letting me know I’m a dumbass and that their rifle is fine. I believe most of these commenters are prideful, smart people, but they haven’t owned enough other rifles to know that they have a pile of crap. No one argues with me about the points I make, they just make general, sweeping arguments that their rifle is great and they love it and I’m a dumbass. To be clear, this is bad for me on YouTube, because I have a high number of dislikes on that video, so it will be shown to fewer people and I’ll make less money from the video. I get a lot more views, and earn more money from YouTube on my review on the Remington 783, in part because it’s more positive ( and I do think it’s a lot better than the 770). YouTube, the internet, print, and society in general incentive reviewers to give glowing positive reviews of products so that people who bought the product can feel good about themselves when they look up info on it afterwards. I know that a ton of people are doing this, because I can’t imagine 50% of viewers on my 770 video are pressing dislike because they really dislike my point by point takedown of a rifle they might be looking at. I’m getting downvotes from fanboy owners who don’t know any better.
Some Raw Stats
Through the magic of the interwebs, I can tell you that the phrase “remington 770 review” gets searched 4,400 times per month, whereas “remington 783 review” gets searched 3,600 times per month. There are more people searching for reviews on the 770. I have an article and video on each rifle, and there is less competition for “remington 770 review”.
Remington 770 Article pageviews per month: 833
Remington 770 YouTube views per month: 1,301
Remington 783 Article pageviews per month: 3,691
Remington 783 YouTube views per month: 9,296
So, even though the 770 gets 1.2X the searches and has less competition in reviews out there, my similar articles and videos get 4.4X and 7.1X less traffic. This is not a coincidence, Google is optimizing for what the user wants in video and on search. I’m not a genius or anything; every publisher out there probably knows the same thing: positive articles get more views, while negative reviews piss people off, because they don’t want to know that they bought a piece of crap. If I fed my family by the number of views I got on my articles or YouTube videos, I’d be a fucking idiot to do ANY negative reviews. I could get a bucketload of views on my website or YouTube by making a more positive review of the Remington 770. I won’t.
Conclusion
With this article, I wanted to paint a picture mainly for people who I piss off by doing a (very rare) negative review. I think I have 3 truly negative reviews on this entire website, out of 246 articles (at this time). I carefully consider how the product is supposed to be used and almost always in those instances, it does what it’s supposed to do. Rarely, as in the case of the Remington 770, Bushnell Sport 600, or Savage B.Mag, they don’t perform well in the application I think they were designed for. That’s OK. Some products need further refinement before a successful re-release, some products don’t get enough QC, and some products are just flat out shit. I know this and most other reviewers out there know this as well. Only some will give a negative review, while others will gloss over the really bad parts, add some cool music and voice over, and still give an 8/10 review for a piece of crap. Can you tell the difference?
