Faux Your Entertainment: Amazon.com Product Reviews as a Locus of Digital Performance

Over the last couple of years, numerous product pages on Amazon.com have been intentionally and collaboratively overrun with humorous fake customer reviews aimed at mocking the items for sale or what they symbolize. In doing so, participants have managed to carve out a vernacular niche within the institutional confines of Amazon, establishing a vibrant digital venue for performative discourse and play. This essay examines how and why these commandeered product pages on Amazon proliferate, and analyzes how individuals interact with the digital space in pursuit of meaningful interaction online. So doing, this essay demonstrates how individuals collaborate through performative humor and narrative-smithery online to further turn the tables on institutional forces.