
Ask HN: Do you really watch “similar shows of X” or buy “similar items of X”? - gethooked
I want to get the opinion of people who actually does and enlighten me on what are the cognitive signals these options have for the user.<p>So do you? What&#x27;s your take on this?
======
brownbat
I don't think recommendations (from web elements or from friends) are ever a
simple cause/effect relationship for me. I think it works like this:

I treat recommendations like tally marks, once a show gets enough high quality
tallies, I check it out. Maybe if I have conflicting information, I try to
research more.

If it's a novel recommendation engine, I might discount the value of its
recommendations a lot, until it's proven to be really good.

Same thing for friends. Those who share my taste or at least know my tastes
really well, I calibrate up, based on the source.

Regardless of the quality of the source, I usually need a few independent
sources before I check something out.

So a "similar to" from a good recommendation engine might tip the scales, or
cause me to ask around, probably won't make me buy on its own. And if it's
giving untrustworthy results, it gets discounted pretty fast.

~~~
gethooked
thanks for the valuable insight :) I haven't looked at it this way.

------
cauterized
Recommendation engines never seem to capture the dimensions/characteristics
that I actually care about.

They're useful for the exploratory phase of shopping when I'm trying to
broaden the search and find all my options for, say, a cheap plastic cutlery
set for kids.

They're completely useless to me for suggesting media to consume, when the
problem is narrowing down the near infinity of options to a manageable number.
They tend to give unhelpful suggestions because they match items based on
superficial qualities (genre, same supporting actor appeared in both, song is
in a minor key) rather than the ones that matter to me (character development,
pacing, arrangement).

