Who wants to be . . . POPULAR?

POPULAR! you're gonna be popular!

i'll teach you the propper ploys,

when you talk to boys, little ways to flirt and flounce,

ooh! i'll show you what shoes to wear!

how to fix your hair!

everthing that really counts to be...

POPULAR!

i'll help you be popular!

you'll hang with the right cohorts,

you'll be good at sports,

know the slang you've got to know.

so let's start, 'cause you've got an awfully long way to go!

For those of you who don't recognize the lyrics, they're from the musical "Wicked" and it's the song sung by Glinda, AKA the Good Witch of Oz.

Anyway, I recently learned something new that SHOULD help me in my question. It comes courtesy of an e-mail on the Amazon.com website in the discussion group for "Top

Reviewers." I know I don't belong there yet since I'm not the top 1000, but folks there have been kind enough to welcome me, to give me some advice and to explain things about which I am currently clueless.

Anyway, a fellow from the discussion forum recently explained to me why you DON"T want to have "fans" on Amazon.com. (I had wondered about this when I sometimes visited others profiles and one stat which comes up is "how many fans you have." I foolishly thought having fans was a good thing, but James tells me otherwise in this post:

A fan is someone who has voted "Helpful" x times for your reviews. Amazon stops counting this IDs helpful votes forever. They are listed on the reviews but do not count. If you do not work in specific areas, fans are less of a problem. For reviews that work within specific areas, they can be a major vote loss. I have 50 fans from my Civil War reviews.
You will not know when/if you become a fan, Amazon is very careful not to tell customers they can no longer vote for a reviewer they like.
IMO, Amazon has stopped showing new fans but is still adding them and stealing votes. At one time, I was getting fans faster than votes. Amazon pulled back as reviewer's were screaming at them from all sides.

I am still amazed at how seriously many of the reviewers on Amazon take their "jobs" -- though many tell me it's just a really engrossing kind of fun hobby. It's exciting to find a whole community of people who are as interested in writing reviews as I am. On the other hand, it's a bit humbling to really how arcane and kafkaesque the reviewing system is -- and how little I know and how far I have to go!

Off to read some more . . . I'm a bit concerned that going to church and to Walmart today felt a bit like being furlowed from some sort of serial offenders program. Anyway, it's blowing and cold and raining here (highly unusual for Virginia Beach in June), so it's a great day for reading. Currently working on "the Age of the Unthinkable" by Joshua Ramo.