Both reviews were easy to write

A new kind of software arrives, and within a day two reviews of it are travelling round every feed in the region.

The first says it changes everything. It describes this first version in loving detail, as though it were finished, and explains how whole professions will look different by the summer.

The second says it is a con. It describes the people behind it as hustlers, counts the jobs it will destroy and the harm it will do, and concludes that it will not work anyway.

Readers share whichever one matches their mood. Both do very well.

What the two have in common is that they were easy. Neither asked the writer to use the thing for long, or to talk to anybody who did, or to sit with the uncomfortable likelihood that it is useful in some ways and harmful in others, and that the first version will not be the last. Each fits in a sentence, which is part of why it spreads.

The same pair gets written about almost every new thing: a new way to pay, a new way to shop, a new kind of screen. Small sellers read them and either panic or rush in.

The honest review is slower to write and harder to pass on. It says this is good at these things, poor at those, likely to change, and worth watching closely. It rarely travels far.

It is very nearly always the one that turns out right.