Saturday, March 3, 2012

Mid-Life Crisis according to Netflix

Netflix recommends movies based on the taste preferences of the movies a viewer had previously watched. I am  always amazed at the accuracy of their prediction and find their ways of categorizing movies quite fascinating. For example, "strong female bonding" is one of my favorite themes. I never told anybody, but the recommendation engine correctly detected it. How smart! How could the recommendation engine know so much about me!

Today I noticed I was recommended a few movies based on "witty, mid-life crisis, comedies". I was shocked. Could it be that I had watched enough movies for the cyber Freud to detect a pattern? Did Netflix dig out something in my subconscious that my conscious mind hadn't even been aware? (I immediately remembered a recent news about how Target's data mining found out some girl in New Jersey was pregnant before her father heard about it.) Or, should I just treat any possible mid-life crisis as part of a witty comedy?

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