Yelp: Simultaneously Making a Culture Visible and Invisible

Yelp.com has become cultural scripture for urbanites around the country. Yelp simultaneously acts as a resource in rebelling against the homogenization of retail and restaurant space while disguising the social-economic differences within a city. Furthermore Yelp foreground's craftsmanship in a post-Marxist culture, while simultaneously concealing the labor or exploitation of labor. Yelp imagines a cosmopolitan community where cultural commodities become accessible through the review format and cyber-democracy. Furthermore Yelp users and reviewers elevate their social currency by evaluating and reviewing cities and the cultures inhabiting their city. Yelp empowers the consumer while marginalizing the producer.

It is important to examine how the Yelp user has been branded as urban, young, hip, and technologically savvy. The implication is that the user is economically relevant to the businesses highlighted on Yelp. This site imagines the urban space as a space for leisure, abundance, and style. Authenticity is privileged and idealized, thus making previously undesirable neighborhoods desirable and subject to gentrification and the residents subject to exclusion.

I purpose to focus primarily on the highest rated Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles and how the comments and reviews of these restaurants imagine the Los Angeles community. I will be examining the presence and/ or absence of references to immigration, labor, or the Latino community in Los Angeles.

I will rely on texts examining cosmopolitanism, tourism, and representation to guide me through my argument that Yelp disempowers underprivileged communities through their business practices and review process as seen through the representation of Mexican culture and laborers in Los Angeles.