Yelp review of Yelp (updated review), or "Catch it while you can."

Why are some people so afraid of the truth?

Do I, a person of color, as I didn't viscerally know, let the white people of Yelp tell me what racism is?

The truth is important.  Although it is not a commodity in the typical sense--something bought or sold--, a business that plays fast and loose with the truth should pay a price.

The truth is justice. 


* * * * *

O.K.!

I've written some scathing reviews on Yelp, and there are many other * one star reviews, by others, that are more blisteringly negative than anything I've written.

And Yelp's "Talk" is a place for members to use four-letter words, put-downs, insults, cruelty, crudity...  

But my last review for the downtown YMCA in Seattle did not have anything that could be considered a personal attack.

That is, unless you are of the mind that being highly critical of the specfic actions and conduct of an employee of a business is the same thing as personally attacking that person.  Really, I wouldn't know (or care about) what a business employee did at home.

But when the tactics of that employee are really "slimy," well...calling them "slimy" will inevitably sound personal.   I was frontally attacked:  not with a meat cleaver but with things said aggressively and viciously.

Granted the business is a Yelp advertiser, but wasn't Yelp supposed to not cave into businesses (or their proxies)' demands to remove reviews unfavorable to them?

I certainly believe that businesses are responsible for the conduct of their employees "on business time."

This is why I believe that the downtown Seattle YMCA must be held accountable for what happened to me there on July 9, 2015, when I was bullied and personally attacked by its director Cynthia Klever.  (Her assistant was also on hand to be a neutral observer (!) but wanted to get in on the action, by chiming in--at regular intervals like a cuckoo in a Swiss clock-- "Oh, that was aggressive!").

This is important to report and document.  There is much in our society that is trivial, banal, or untrue;  my reviews of my experiences at the downtown YMCA are not.

Yelp should not be censoring as important as this.

And as "a consumer experience" (Yelp's favorite phrase), others have the right to know about my "consumer" experiences over the past 13 years with this business.

I don't lie.  I don't invent.  I don't embroider.  I don't exaggerate.

The fact that the review may embarass quite a bit the downtown Seattle YMCA is not a  good reason for Yelp to remove it, not any more than it is for a business to terminate my membership because they disliked my Yelp review(s) of them.

Apparently my review of the Seattle YMCA hits such raw nerves there that they have to employee someone to frequently "check-in on things" to make sure that Yelp removes the review, in case I re-post it!

It's like a Marx Brothers film...

Even if I hadn't written them, people would be leaving precisely because of the things that I pointed out in my reviews (bullying, obscene language, break-ins, thefts, changing demographics, racial tensions). 


My last review of the downtown YMCA was probably the best Yelp review I have written in the last decade. (I spent countless hours writing and revising it).

And yet Yelp does not have the guts to let it stand.  

It's a mega-business, so what does fear that one review--the veridical, real experience of a real person--will cause the sky to tumble down over their heads?


* * * * *

By the croak of dawn, all my review updates of the Y since 2013 were removed.

This included updates in which I recounted:

(1) my "Hannibal Lecter" experience--being harrassed at the YMCA by a white man who stalked me and leered at me.

(2) the frequent use of obscenities and the loud behavior of many black members.  I repeated the lingo I had overheard.  In other reviews I have parodied the lingo of young whites (the use of "awesome" every other four words), but  Yelp did not censor them.  

If black speech patterns are not shameful, why remove my Y review?

(3) being bullied by a former head lifeguard who had an anger management problem.

(4) "a racial (or color) hierachy" at this YMCA in which blacks were at the top, whites being deferential to them.  Other minorities such as myself were relegated to second-class.  Is it racist to state that this is how I felt?

(5) changing racial demographics at the Y:  2002 versus 2015.   What's wrong with the truth?

I spent probably over 40 hours writing and rewriting these review updates.

Half a dozen were  removed--censored--without notification.

Is it ethical to do this only because the YMCA vehemently complained, the reviews presumably putting the downtown Seattle YMCA in an unfavorable light?

I didn't know the Young's Men Christian Association of Seattle would be willing to fork out so much...to crush the head of the serpent.

(Little 'ol me).