I get it. I get why Amazon and sites like it do the suggestions thing but I don’t half get narked by it sometimes. Admittedly it is indeed ridiculous to get offended by a widget, and a not particularly imaginative widget at that, but I guess I take my taste in music (and dvds, books and erm, well all sorts of other random stuff you can buy on Amazon these days) fairly seriously.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of your fascists in this area, I have an open mind and indulge in a spot of Girls Aloud or Britney when the mood is right. Quality pop is something to be appreciated and respected, I just don’t like crap. All fine, and to be fair, Amazon haven’t recommended crap, I think I just get mildly offended at a website function having the audacity to suggest music to me, someone that spends so much time hunting out new music. CREDIBLE music.
Of course this is all relative, music as an entity is such a personal medium – people use music as a way of sculpting their own identities and finding common ground with others (God that sounded wanky, but you know what I mean), they judge other people by their taste in music and in the case of music lovers, ok – this particular music lover- they judge the people that claim they don’t have any taste in music whatsoever, or worse, they claim they don’t really care about music at all. You can probably imagine how well that little gem has gone down in the past. Everyone has their thing, I get that – not THAT much of a fascist, but seriously, I do get pretty judgemental about people that claim to not have any interest in any form of music whatsoever and never listen to it. Imagine that...
Anyway, back to Amazon. I think I get so irrationally offended at the recommendations widget function thingy is that, despite the amount of music that I buy from Amazon, it suggests that I am so clueless about music that I wouldn’t have heard of Florence & The Machine, Ladyhawke or Fleet Foxes. It’s not even really about those 3 artists which to be fair, you may not have heard of at all if you aren’t particularly into pop music and that’s totally feasible and fair enough. I am though, so I think I’m justified despising the stupid goddamn ‘I know what you like’ Amazon widget. Yes of course it’s all based on bloody minded-ness and a somewhat immature insistence on being an INDIVIDUAL with a mind of my own. I get sucked in by advertising/marketing like everyone else, despite my feeble attempts to fight it. On that note... I am by no means not a sucker for consumerism, baby, and I'd like one of these for Christmas thanks : http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/what-scent-drives-you-today
