Welcome back to How Annoying Is It! After a much longer than anticipated hiatus, we are happy to finally unveil our new site features! Our main goal was to get you, the readers, to join us in the conversation. We are doing that through user reviews (which now include TOYS!), a better rating system, and an individual rating system. All of these upgrades, we think, will seriously enhance the usability and fun of the site. So take a look around and join the conversation!

User Generated Reviews!

User Reviews are common online, whether it’s the latest novel on Amazon, or the new trendy restaurant on YELP. But never in the history of Blogging have user generated reviews come to the world of Children’s Entertainment Over Analyzation (CEOA). Today, that changes.

Here’s how it will work. You will choose a category to write a review (Movies, TV Shows, or Toys & Other Things). From there, you will register with a username and email address. It only takes a second, and we won’t be giving out nobody’s email addresses. People who do that are headachy at least… Anyway, then you can plug in some fun, easy information for the Box Score (stuff like “Three Word Description,” and an Infuri-Ometer Rating) and write your review.

After you submit it, our crack team of HAII staff will review your submission and post it. The only main criteria are that it is coherent and clean. So jump on in. There are thousands of parents out there who need to know what you have learned!

The New Infuri-Ometer

Last year, we knew we had made a mistake by only having three categories: Que This, Mostly Harmless, and Cringe Worthy. So we finally decided to spread things out a bit. The new scale is from 1 to 5 instead of 1 to 10. When you are writing your own reviews, you might want to keep these qualities in mind.

Click on the titles below to see the new Infuri-Ometer in action!

1- Irritant Free
Synonyms: Quality; Respectable Stuff; Better than Ezra
This is reserved for the really good ones. Not only are films, shows, and toys free of irritants, but they are actually very likeable. This takes the place of the best “Queable” movies we have already reviewed, like “Up” and “Kung Fu Panda.”

2- Almost Pleasant
Synonyms: Not Half Bad; Surprisingly decent; Sympatico
These aren’t quite Irritant Free, but they’re better than harmless. This is the category that parents will often drop the word “Cute.” As in, “yeah, it was cute. The kids really liked it.” Notice mom didn’t say she loved it. She didn’t yak it up on Facebook. But it was nice, and worth a Queue.

3- Mostly Harmless
Synonyms: Phenomenally Average; Powerfully Mediocre; Ignorable
Mostly Harmless entertainment includes stuff the kids will enjoy, and which won’t drive everyone else crazy. But that’s the most we can say for it. Parents won’t love it, but they won’t wish for the arrest and indictment of the producers, either. Mostly Harmless shows play in the background. It’s bearable.

4- Headachy
Synonyms: Grating; Officially Offensive; Jerry Lewis-esque
Reach for the Excedrin Migraine, my friends, because this is where we turn the corner. Headachy is stuff that parents want to hide, because it hurts them (the parents). The kids, having an undeveloped sense of taste, might love it. But their big brothers, sisters, parents, and babysitters will try to block it out or, if possible, make it disappear altogether.

5- Cringe Worthy
Synonyms: Maddening; Excruciating; I’d Rather Have My Fingers Broken By Jack Bauer
Cringe Worthy is reserved for the truly awful. Again, the kids might actually enjoy it, but a parent, after one viewing, will beg for mercy. We’re talking about horrors like Santa Buddies, Barny, and Teletubbies. Seriously. Is there a parent who has been able to watch these without hating life a little bit more? It’s just not worth it. You need to avoid these.

Individual Rating System

This just adds more user participation for HAII. Now, you can Rate any movie, tv show, or toy using the same categories as the Infuri-Ometer. You will see the 1 to 5 rating on the right side of the title of the movie or product that you are viewing (near the top right corner of the site).

The site will keep a constant tally of all user ratings and average them out. That way, you can see if the reviewer is on par with most others who visit the site. It can give you a bird’s eye view on how other parents feel about these particular choices.

Pretty neat, huh?

“Are you guy still going to write reviews?”

In a word, yes. We love writing our extensive essay-style reviews, so we’ll keep those going. And if your reviews catch our eye consistently, who knows… Your reviews may be included in our OFFICIAL REVIEWS section.