I’d like to buy a bowel

Today a story straight from the bowels of Yelp as discovered by yours truly.

You might think “yelp” is one of those made-up words so trendy among tech companies. You know, those words formed by taking two other words and jamming them uncomfortably together like a sequence from Sesame Street.

“Yellow.”

“Pee.”

“Yellow.”

“Pee.”

“Yel-pee.”

“Yel-pee.”

“Yel-p.”

“Yel-p.”

“Yelp.”

“Yelp.”

Alas, no, it didn’t go down like that. It turns out that “yelp” is an actual real word. It’s even in the dictionary and stuff. I looked.

yelp
noun
: a short sharp cry, esp. of pain or alarm

Wow. What a perfect principle to embody in a site that allows regular people like you and me to offer up our opinions on restaurants and businesses. By definition, they are expected to be short cries of pain and alarm.

Thanks, Yelp! Gotcha covered. 🙂

Today’s true story is something that happened in the world of Yelp. No, it’s not that exciting.

I know some of you foolish miscreants will yelp after only one visit. Not me. I went umpteen times. To this BBQ restaurant down the street. You know, research.

Eventually I decided they were okay so I decided to go back and update my initial review (after only one visit) of four stars and upgrade them to five full stars. This was huge.

Before doing this, I took a few moments and looked over some of the other reviews. One of them caught my eye.

The reviewer thoughtfully provided details about her bodily functions and how, she assumed, they were related to dining experiences. She talked about BBQ and diarrhea. Yes, she actually used that highly explosive word. Then, to add emphasis, she wrote something like this:

“Not exactly a high class place. They even serve the BBQ in bowels.”

Bazinga!

What to make of this? Was it merely a typo? Or, in conjunction with other terminologies employed in her review, was a subtle tongue-in-cheek bit of fun?

I don’t know. What do you think? It’s hard to say.

Yelp provides a way to contact each other. I decided to ask. I’m a curious sort. I wrote to her:

“If the usage of bowel was intentional, well played! I give you five stars for snark and cleverness! If not, however, it’s a rather unfortunate typo considering its proximity to the Big D-Word, don’t you think? Hell, it’s your review and you can bowel all you want. This is not criticism. I’m was just curious about your intent and thought I’d ask.”

Within an hour she wrote back and my curiosity was satisfied. It was a typo and she had fixed it. But all of the other stuff in her critical review remained. Woot. Another win-win. I plugged in my five stars, which was displayed directly above the accounts of her bodily functions.

My work here was done.