nettflixx

This little message from Netflix is meant, I guess, to make us feel excited about the world of unseen films waiting on their website, but it's awfully bald. It gives me a jolt every time I see it, down to the period at the end of the declarative sentence that lends it an air of creepy control rather than happy advertising urging us toward something.

Your taste preferences make movie discovery easy EVERY CLICK YOU MAKE WE'LL BE WATCHING YOU • WE PLANT COOKIES IN YOUR BROWSER WHERE THEY HIDE AND REPORT BACK • WE CAN DIVINE YOUR TASTE BY SIMPLY LOOKING OVER YOUR SHOULDER...blah blah. It would be scarier if Netflix weren't often wrong about its guesses, though. BASED ON YOUR INTEREST IN [some crap I clicked in a fit of boredom or research] WE SUGGEST [some similar crap that makes me recoil in horror]...blah blah. Sometimes Netflix is "right" about one's taste, but the whole thing is a crude enough mechanism that it all feels less Borg than it might. But still.

Computer dating sucks, man! We didn't have anything in common.