Consumerism and the feedback loop

We have reached peak feedback. The customer is not only always right, but always writing, rating. The bank, the phone company, and the hospital want us to evaluate our experiences with them on a scale of 1 to 10. There are Yelp reviews of Planet Earth.

- ALEXANDRA JACOBS

The constant assessment of daily life is among the all-too-familiar but strange developments scrutinized by Emily Mester in her unsettling first book, a collection of personal essays about consumption called, in contrast to its slimness, American Bulk. Even at the grave, she notes, buyers are weighing in on the many choices of coffin: "One wrote ominously: I will purchase again."

Writing as the alter ego "Em"—folksy or menacing, depending on how you squint—Mester herself used to post online reviews of scratchy throw pillows, bad haircuts, a mean history teacher, until a restaurant owner responded to explain the human struggle behind a disappointing burrito.

Looking for confirmation of her choices begins to seem, as the young ‘uns say, sus. "In my attempts to reduce the frictions between me and certain objects," Mester writes, "I’d multiplied the frictions that invariably remained. If I believed there was a best body wash, I had to fear the worst."