Good evening. Im anderson cooper. Welcome back to our special cnn presentation. Were bringing You Cnn Documentary Short Films that reveal the search for community among diverse groups of americans. Up next, were introducing you to a group of strangers, all searching for belonging by sharing Product Reviews on line. Stay with us. Super reviewers, rate, review, repeat begins right now only on cnn. It was a severe dopamine high, and i chased it, too. Theres the Rush Of Playing the game. I really got off on it. A lot of it was subconscious and i was addicted. Yell p became yelper or yelping. It was really good. I felt good to write those reviews. Everyone and i mean everyone reads online reviews. I think many of us fail to understand just how ubiquitous reviews have come in our lives. Dentists, car mechanics, everything in the marketplace, it seems. There are thousands of movies to watch. Millions of books to read. We turn to reviews as a way of simplifying a very complex world. It turns out fewer than 2 of people who write reviews and the most prolific reviewers Writing Hundreds or thousands of reviews are even a tiny minority. The question rises, who are these people . I love the sign where it says dance like nobodys watching. I believe its just the opposite. Dance like everybodys watching. I like to share my enthusiasm for life. That is exactly right. I tell people i got to dance initially, and they dont pay you . No. Youre wasting your time. No, im not. Because you know what . Im having a great time. What i found Google Maps seemed to be the perfect way i could contribute photos, i could contribute reviews. Accomplishments. I like that. Check that off the Bucket List. Its never ending. Right. Do you want to reach The End of your list . No. Just keep adding stuff to your Bucket List and you never run out of stuff to do. Thats right. I did the first reviews. So Yell P has a feature that you get a little badge like a kinder gardner. I chased after that pat on the bat. I wanted to be there before Jonathan Gold. Food critic john gold. The only critic to win a pulitzer prize. In my mind he was never authentic enough to cover chinese food. I could be that guy. For a while, i was. Huff post did a piece calling it controversial and then like Jonathan Gold was like Tony C on yelp man, he has to be there first. It was a competition in my mind between john and the golden eye. It fed my ego. It fed my narcissim. It fed Lie Selfesteem at the time. I became addicted to that. Because im on the spectrum, the way i interact with other people is by studying patterns, right. I learn the patterns. I understand the rules. I can remember every single detail of a conversation. I know what you said. I know what i said. I know what i was wearing. I know what you were wearing. Logic is my brains first language. It probably only takes me somewhere between 45 and 9 0g seconds to actually write the review. Because number one, i can keep all the notes in my head. I never write anything down. Im always thinking about all of these different details, all the specifications, and then i simply just organize on the screen what was already in my head. I think that makes me different than other reviewers. Theyve r experimented with different ways of awarding people for writing reviews. Y we want people to like us, think were good looking. We want people to think were funny. And Tech Platforms have notten savvy of providing us with these little hits of dona mean that. These can become so powerful that they can become forms of possession. They sucked me in. You get so many points for every photograph you contribute. Pictures of Food And Label it, you get three more points. Over 200 points, thats my new goal. Lets go back that way. I am a goaloriented person. The other retirees, i dont think they always have a purpose. I need that. I need a purpose. Heres all my spreadsheets and our current plan were going to go to michigan, wisconsin, south dakota, idaho. Shockingly, my original Retirement Plan was to be an athome grandmother. Around 2015, dave and i were both trying toe decide where we wanted to go with our lives. He said, well, if you could do anything you wanted, no matter what it was, what would it be . I went, ive always wanted to live in an rv and travel the country. He went, you know, that sounds awesome. The next day we went Rv Shopping and we never looked back. Were nomadic. We go from one place to the next place and make each new place our home. We have to make sure that we take time and relax, you know, stop and smell the roses. You sort of Build It into the schedule. Shell supply me with a list of 20 things. Which ones are you interested in . That one, that one, that one. I dont want to do that. For example, do you want to go rent bicycles and ride around key west . No, i do not want to go do that. Im sorry. Just a mellow Summer Day even though i dont get to go a lot of places anymore, i still wake up and put on my perfume. I put on a pretty dress. Why . A pretty dress makes me feel happy. Even if i cant go anywhere. Theres so much joy in getting dressed for me. This is lemon blueberry, a gift from my daughter antoinette. Shes very particularly in terms of how things are sent, color patterns, color arrangements, so in her writing her reviews, she wants to be very particularly. Her mind works that way. It gives a Person Something that they know theyre good at, they can do it, because your skills may not necessarily operate in the stereotypical forms, but youre sharp at this. In the program you get first crack at stuff thats kind of in your wheelhouse. I was getting 25, 30 boxes a day, start with the small stuff first and make my way to the big stuff. At the time i started, my rent was about 44,000. I rose to 10,000. Then eventually a thousand. Once i broke the top ten, it was like a point of pride, because once you break the top ten, you get this extra little badge beside your name that says Hall Of Fame reviewer. I was like, oh, im famous, but only on amazon. It turned out that one of the things thats useful for the survival of our ancestors was the validation of groups. If youre part of a group and they like you, they will protect you. What happens when you put that on the internet. Now were looking for validation from anonymous strangers. You now how to i could do it really well. Anyway, the Fried Chicken with the red rice. How exactly honestly, I Remember You being a dick and being like really bold comments on my blog. You were a much younger version of myself and you had experience all food in l. A. I just thought this guy he must know more than i do. But you took the pact. You stuck. You persevered. I bailed. I was done after a couple of years of that. Ive asked you for years to write me a story. Why did you stop writing . Come on. Thats a really good segue. God damn you. Its really good. You can cut that. Ok. Im not going to stop bugging you until i get your thoughts now on a document. I dont have the chops to be an artist or a creative type. I am not an artist. I am a small business owner. I push paper in a very boring sector. I didnt think my writing was good enough. And i needed people to say this is good work. Really boosting my morale and my confidence. I dont understand what the point of the game is. My wife really drove home, you dont need this. You have better things to do. Are you so unconfident about yourself, you need these people . There was a little bit of intervention. If you dont stop this, there will be repercussions. I Cant Talk about the wrecker man, the office home wrecker. Thats all i can say. [relaxed summer themed music playing] summer is a state of mind, you can visit anytime. Savor your summer with lincoln. Is your cleanser doing enough for your sensitive skin . Cetaphil gentle Skin Cleanser defends against 5 signs of skin sensitivity, and actively hydrates as it cleanses. Cetaphil. Dermatologist recommended. Complete care for your sensitive skin. Millions of vulnerable americans struggle to get reliable transportation to their medical appointments. Thats why i started medhaul. Citi launched the Impact Fund to invest in both women and entrepreneurs of color like me, so i can realize my vision and give everything ive got to my company, and my community. I got you. For the love of people. For the love of community. For the love of progress. Citi. Does your deodorant keep you fresh all day . We put dove Men Deodorant to the test with nelson, a volunteer that puts care into everything he does. It really protects my skin. Its comfortable and lasts a long time. Dove men, 48h Freshness with triple action moisturizers. By the time that my kids were walking, the reviewing and writing mostly dissipated. Before i could do so, i saw a slight thing passing along the rock on which i stood. You imagine all my sensations. Us asians who greated here with parents who were born culturally fluent, couldnt guide us to read and write. For me to cobble together contents, its back breaking. And so im reconciling the fact that i Cant Write like that because i never read the greats. Hey, even though we got you all the books you wanted, you just havent been reading them. Why, consequences, right . Yeah. Are you doing anything . No, not that much. Then stop asking to play video games, dude. My childhood was oppressed. Not in a violent way but in a lifestyle way. My parents didnt let me listen to Rock N Roll music. They didnt let me read american fiction for a long time. Giving access to the zeitgeist is what i wasnt p given. I want to give these kids a chance to be an actor or to be an entrepreneur or be a Film Maker or or not a Writer But Anything else in the creative field. I cant explain that. I dont know why. Many people feel like theyre not heard very well in that persons eyes. So p online reviews become a forum for you can speak to an audience. People are actually reviewing things as a form of selfexpression. Theyre not just holding up a mirror to the world. Theyre expressing their inner needs, their inirhungers to the world. Come on, bandit. Working for ibm, you cant forget stuff. Everything is i worked for ibm for 34 and a half years, even though i was doing software development, i had to wear a dress. Ladies werent allowed to wear pants. Youre sort of indoctrinated and told what your societal expectations are. We lived in a corporate world. We lived normal lives. We had homes and responsibilities and we dont have those anymore. Hi, sweetheart. Its freedom to accept who you are without having to worry about the pressure from society. One of the things dave and i have decided is live for today, man. Today is just going to be fun. If i look at my contributions, i have a little pin all over the united states. 34 of the 50 well have finished by The End of this year. Its tough to get to hawaii. It is tough to get to hawaii. We need to go on a boat. All right. I wish i was tall enough to help. We should have brought a boat with paddles. Id had this awful highpitched hum in my ear, enough to make me want to claw my ears off. I started using the supplement. I noticed an immediate decrease in the intensity of that hum, and so i thought how do i get the word out . Oh, i can write a review about it. Turns out that review was very popular, because of that, i got Amazons Attention like, hey, theres this super secret program and we want you to be part of it. Youll get stuff from amazon and then you review it, so it was like christmas every day. My grandfather was a pioneer of soil conservation. He would have often worked with white farm ers. If somebody has knowledge, then youre supposed to share your knowledge. I think because of who my parents are and the values they instilled in me, i just believe that part of my purpose on earth is to help other people. The desire that we have to experience the world and then share what we have experienced with other Human Beings is a universal desire. Do you ever get tired . No, no. I dont want regrets. It goes back to my sister not being able to deliver life to the fullest. All right. Lets do this. I go, you know what. I can do it for you. I will do everything that you missed in life. Im catching up. Im catching up. Come on, baby, pump those legs. When i was 13 years old, my sister was killed in a car accident. She was only six days of 19, and One Day she was this and the next day she wasnt. I hate funerals and stuff, but they go, oh, she looked so good, she had a great life. At 13, i went, if i died, what are they going to say about me . You know, this is harder in a boat than it was on a bicycle. Starting to think i might prefer a bicycle. This reviewing came In My Life at a time when i needed it the most. I got the diagnosis of meuneurs disease. My body was failing me, lose my job because of it. I wasnt physically capable of working anymore, so life starts falling off a cliff. Its very unpredictable. I still have a problem with balance, you know. I still fall. Part of myself has died and i dont know that ill ever get that back. Ive got this program. It gave me a reason to get up every morning. It gave me something to do. It let me be focused. Im on a spectrum, i am excellent at focussing on one thing and giving it my all. So i made this one thing my all. You really want me to read . Ill read it just for you. This is november 7, 2008. I would not call myself a religious man. Yet sometimes the man touches me. Ling ling had just pounced on the first few bars of thaikovskys 5th. Id brought food from compton earlier that morning. Then the man touched me twierks or should i say simultaneously. The both long awaited concert and the porky juices mix. Its almost asian with its spices. Smoked in the hickory. This joint is it. Charge to perfection. Cartilage. It is lovely. It feels really weird reading that because i wrote better than i thought. You can go all the way back thousands of years in Human History to Cave Paintings or the graffiti on the walls at pompeii and see that people were offering their opinions of things to other people. In some ways, we look to put our signature on the world. We look to leave our legacy behind, to feel like we count for something. It gives our lives meaning. Look. They write up on the ceiling. You think i could write up on the ceiling . Do you have something to write with . I want to contribute to society and i want to leave my own mark. That speaks to me, to help the people behind me. Come here, baby, come here. You always hear of these people that they saved so long to retire and then something happened. They never get a chance to live their dreams. I wondered if i died that someone could say, you know, she did exactly what she wanted. Dont dwell on dying. All right. Yall ready to move on . Huh . Satellites down . Yeah. Refrigerators locked . Yeah. Doors locked . Right. You make sure that you have no regrets. The next exciting moment is just around the corner, and well do it. From th from. From the time i had this disease, i knew the only way i was gogate of a bottom less pit was to create a business for myself. Because i was in the buying program, i tried this pillow spray, scents were unbalanced. So i thought to myself, why dont i just make one myself. Everyone has something to offer. I hope and pray that she is able to be in a position where she can be a continued blessing and also have a career. I could just be financially free like literally my Dream House is on the market right now. Maybe One Day. I have never written an online review. Thinking about this ive been asking why i was not motivated by it even though i consume a lot of it. I think we underestimate how important reviews are to our house. There are ten words and its or. Doctor, sailor. Teacher. Seven more. I think writer. Writers a good word. I write. Do you remember . Part of me really wants to get back on a horse and get back on the saddle, so i really should be writing but not for yall. How do you unwind these obse obsessions. In some cases it requires people who love us to come and say let me hold a mirror up to you. We want to slice down, really. Good. And you want to bump against the knife. Ready . Good. Brilliant. Thats good, dude. Hey so today, spam. Your favorite thing in the world. I dont write reviews anywhere. I do it sometimes to entertain myself. I like to go to far flung places. I like to go to tie chung taipei. Im still first. Im just first really far and youre probably never going to find it. You guys are working hard for once. The american in the workplace is our home in many ways