The Big Recommendation Problem
I jokingly call this my “life’s work” but it’s only a joke so we don’t get stuck talking about it. The Recommendation Problem plagues me in my waking hours, my dreams, and at almost every single social event I go to.
“Have you seen Battlestar Galactica? You HAVEN’T? You’ve gotta watch it.”
We have all heard a sentence like this, and I can’t take it anymore. And the reason I have such a big problem with movie recommendations has pretty much 100% to do with the internet.
The Library of Babel
Jorge Luis Borges was a very clever science fiction writer that wrote a famous short story in 1941 called The Library of Babel. Its premise: the layout of an expansive library, one that contained literally every book imaginable. If you can’t quite picture this, imagine a book that contains only the letter “a” repeated 60,000 times. Now, the book next to it in the library contains the same book, except the first letter has changed to “b” but the rest of the book still is a repetition of the letter “a”. Each book contains a different combination of letters, towering to infinity, so that the library contains every possible combination of letters. This means it includes The Great Gatsby. It also means it contains a version of The Great Gatsby set in the year 2001. This also means it contains The Great Gatsby, but every single character is named “Fred”.
The library contains every book you ever read, and across from it the exact opposite of all the books you ever read. Borges writes that some books even contain text that explains the meaning of life, but there is no way to know where it is, or if you have already read it.
Sound like a nightmare? It kind of is. In the story, certain folks go mad trying to read everything in the library, which makes sense. It’s impossible to read everything, and also any kind of endeavor would be ultimately pointless. The best thing you can do, suggests Borges, is to settle into one manageable section, and make the best of it. This is kind of like understanding you will never read everything in you library, so instead you’ll read every book written my someone with the last name “Buckman”.
Powell’s City of Books
Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon is one of the largest bookstores in the world, containing both used and new titles. Having lived in Portland for about three years, I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time at Powell’s. As a book lover, being in Powell’s is akin to going to Disneyland. The store takes up an entire city block, spans four floors, and brags to have just over one million volumes on the shelves. The most common remark about Powell’s layout is that it is immediately overwhelming, which is good for tourism and bad for selling books.
In a famous retail study, researchers set up two shops selling jars of jam. In one, the customer had two dozen choices, in the other, the customer had only six choices. The larger selection brought in more traffic, but the smaller selection led to more sales. The conclusion: when overwhelmed with options, customers experience “choice paralysis”. If you can have anything, you won’t choose anything. And, conversely, a small, curated selection fixes this problem.
At Powell’s, the company addresses this issue by training its employees to proactively help customers navigate the stacks. Booksellers reach out and manage, through their knowledge and finesse, to bring the customer to the section that most suits their needs. Shelves are adorned with notes that highlight staff favorites, and at every information desk there are up-to-date lists of award winners, bestsellers, and themed collections. The selection of thousands is reduced to a sampling of a couple dozen.
The internet is bigger than Powell’s. In scope, it is probably closer to the Library of Babel, as it is littered with real research alongside fake news. It’s easy to loose one’s way as they navigate the rabbit hole. Even worse, it’s hard to even know where to start. We experience this with Netflix when we scroll endlessly and end up not watching anything. We have choice paralysis every day we go online, and as a result we only consume low-commitment media like photos and trailers.
Recommendations and curated lists then become valuable. However, there is a good way and a bad way to go about suggesting a movie to a friend.
Recommendation Etiquette
Recommendations are helpful when they consider their audience. They are unhelpful when they are thoughtlessly and selfishly thrust upon someone who may not care. Which brings me to my Battlestar Galactica story. This actually happened at a party and I’m still sore about it.
“Have you seen Battlestar Galactica? You HAVEN’T? You’ve gotta watch it.”
No. I don’t have to watch Battlestar Galactica. And I probably won’t. I have a long list of things that I am interested in, and the reasons to watch Battlestar Galactica do not meet the threshold requirements for me being motivated to check it out. I told my new acquaintance, Joe, that sorry, I probably was not going to watch Battlestar Galactica. He was not pleased and wanted to know why. This conversation consumed a good chunk of the party, but I am going to outline the argument here:
- If I watched every movie or show someone recommended, I would end up sitting in front of a screen my entire life. So, I cannot take every recommendation.
- I do like movies, so I will on occasion take recommendations. However, I am selective.
- I will take recommendations on movies that sound interesting to me. This is subjective, and so I am the ruling authority of what I find interesting.
- I will take recommendations from people who understand and respect my taste in media.
- I will take recommendations from people that I love, because I love them.
- I will take an occasional random recommendation to mix things up and to prevent living inside of an echo chamber.
After all of this, I will not take a recommendation to watch Battlestar Galactica from a stranger I just met who has no idea what I like or what I am interested in. To be honest, it makes me a little bit mad that Joe was up in arms about this. I am now positioned even more strongly in my stance of never watching Battlestar Galactica.
Potential Solutions
Guillermo del Toro reportedly said of movies and books, “If it doesn’t engage me, I leave it. I do not do homework with my life.” Similarly, I’m not going to take extra hours out of my day to watch an entire film just so I can understand the point you are trying to make. Just explain the point to me.
A creative workaround I’ve found to circumvent the Recommendation Problem is to have the person spoil the film for me. Because of the sheer quantity of films, books, and shows that are created, I have made peace with the fact that I will not see most of it, so I am fine with most of it being spoiled. My girlfriend and I were getting drinks and she told me that I should watch the horror film The Ritual. I suggested instead that she just give me the highlights. She gave me a play by play of the entire film, and we had a lot of fun as it was punctuated by her commentary and my questions/reactions.
When someone is making a recommendation, the subtext is often “This piece of art affected me profoundly, and I want you to have the same experience.” The recommendations are coming from a good place. I mean, if your life was changed after seeing The Shawshank Redemption, of course you would recommend it to everyone in the hopes that it has the same effect on them. But the truth is that every person is on their own specific journey, and they will figure out their media consumption through their own methods. The best thing you can do, as a recommender, is to be conscious and respectful of the time and values of other people.
I find that also I seek out “Best Of” lists from publications and people that I am interested in. If Obama posts his favorite movies from 2018, I’m generally inclined to check some of them out. Further, if my friend Lito sends me an article, I know that it is going to be good and relevant to my interests. I am not saying that we should make recommendations less, but we should consider new ways to share what we like without demanding time and attention from a stranger.
