Planet of the Offensive Online Recommendation Engines

There's a New York Times article today about online recommendation engines from stores like Amazon, NetFlix, and iTunes.  The highlight:

Earlier this month, Walmart.com issued a public apology and took down its entire cross-selling recommendation system when customers who looked at a boxed set of movies that included "Martin Luther King: I Have a Dream" and "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson" were told they might also appreciate a "Planet of the Apes" DVD collection, as well as "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" and other irrelevant titles.

That's great.  So I decided to try a little experiment.  I signed up for a new Amazon account and added the most offensive products I could think of to my wish list, to see what recommendations I'd get.  I made a wish list consisting of:

• Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler
• A confederate flag leather vest (check it out, it's really ridiculous)
• David Duke's book, Jewish Supremacism (according to one of the Amazon reader reviews, this is the edition "with the addition of a section on the Israeli foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks."  That's a relief.)
• Bring It On, by Pat Robertson (a book of Robertson's answers to questions like "Do Clones Have Souls?" -- seriously, that's an example listed in the excerpt)
• Gigli DVD (Ben Affleck & Jennifer Lopez)

Among the recommendations generated:

• Mariah Carey's Glitter DVD
• An appropriately-titled book called "Why Johnny Can't Think" (well, if he's reading everything on my wish list...)
• "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History"
• Alfie, with Jude Law
• Maybe the world's worst-titled book ever, "Hell's Best Kept Secret."  The very first line of the first Amazon reader review on the page: "Satan does not want you to read this book! Though it has been out for a decade, it has really been continually suppressed by the Devil. Not anymore! With the Internet as a resource, as long as there are brothers like myself who are convicted of God's word, I will make sure that this secret is no longer kept hidden!"

This didn't actually teach me anything, but it was sort of fun to fool around with.

Comments

[L]

Hey Jeremy ive been visiting your blog off and 2 years prior to going to law school and it's great that you're doing this instead of law. Gives readers like me a chance to your world of ideas.

[Sanya]

Gigli is one of the most offensive items you could think of? Hahahaha, that's great. :')

[Charlsie]

If you were looking for offensive - I would say that Alfie was one of the most offensive movies I've ever seen. Maybe offensive is the wrong word - because I've definitely seen much more graphically offensive movies - but I found it unbelievably depressing and upsetting.

Upsetting is a better word. And maybe that is just because I'm a girl. I saw one of my friends in each female character - and Alfie was like every guy who ever hurt me or one of my friends rolled into one.

So - offensive.