EVERYWHERE you go these days, people want to hear that you like them.

Well, not individual people so much, but certainly businesses.

If you buy something online, you’ll get a follow-up email with a heading that says something like: “An important message about your recent order”.

In fact, the message will turn out to be more important to the sender than to you – because what they really want is for you to leave them a positive review.

If you buy something in a shop, an assistant is likely to circle a line on the receipt which asks you to visit a website and leave some customer feedback.

Watch a YouTube video and its creator will urge you to “like and subscribe”. Listen to a podcast or audiobook and you’ll be implored to leave a five-star review.

It can seem as though everyone you deal with in everyday life is badgering you to tell them they’re wonderful.

Well, if I were to really give my honest feedback, I’d say this: Stop asking to be validated all the time. It comes off as needy.

I’m being a bit facetious, because in fact, it makes good sense for businesses to ask you for this kind of endorsement.

If you’re a seller in one of the major online marketplaces, your satisfaction score is hugely important. If you’re a creative person trying to get your podcast, YouTube channel or book noticed, reviews and star ratings can make or break your efforts.

And lukewarm endorsements are of very little help. In this ultra-competitive world, everything has to be worth five stars.

(I should add that there are plenty of people who haven’t got the hang of this new world of online reviews. You’ll see them when you shop for a copy of Citizen Kane and find someone has given Orson Welles’ masterpiece a one-star rating on the grounds that the postman left their copy in the wheelie-bin.)

Leaving five-star ratings everywhere doesn’t come naturally for me. I’m a bit of a film nerd, and growing up, I spent many hours thumbing through books that assigned star ratings to movies. The maximum tended to be four stars (that’s inflation for you) and the stars weren’t thrown around liberally. You had to produce The Godfather or Casablanca to earn the top score. Herbie Goes Bananas didn’t get four stars just because it raised a chuckle.

But in the commercial world now, everyone who competently provides a service wants a five-star rating for it. This is probably why so many online businesses employ such an overexcited tone when communicating with customers.

“Great news! You order has been dispatched,” an email will say. Well, that’s not exactly great news, is it? I mean, I’ve paid for the goods, so having them sent out to me is really just the minimum requirement.

Great news would be if the bill was waived, or if Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr were in my area and it would be no trouble for them to drop off that Avengers Blu-ray personally.

For most transactions, most of the time, the reality is that our honest response is “Yeah, all fine, nothing to complain about”. That’s not what many businesses want to hear, because they’re proud of their ‘brand’ and want us to love it. But that’s reality.

With people all around us soliciting feedback all the time, I suspect many of us are starting to ignore an increasing number of such requests.

This may be a good thing in the long run, because businesses will only earn those five-star ratings by really doing exceptional things.

Friendliness, excellent service and a bit of personality in interactions with customers might become the all-important ways to distinguish yourself.

That would be great news. Or at least, quite good news.

n If you enjoyed this column, please feel free to leave a five-star review. And please share it on social media. Why not write to all your friends and tell them how wonderful I am? Go ahead and send lavish gifts to my friends and family. Most of all, please, please like me.