Reccomend

Written 55-B06 [2023-08-23], Edited 55-B06 [2023-08-23]

Image credit: Twitter Twemoji

The root problem was trust.

Why would I trust that the topmost result was any good? It was a recommendation, but by who, and why? It was a recommendation by a machine tasked with giving its owners a return on their investment.

Well, time to read a review. But why should I trust the first review I read? It blasted me with advertising, which would be understandable if I wasn’t a paying a customer. I was not, but only because the paying customers got ads anyways, in the vain hope that they would be rewarded for their tribute to the Empire State Times. And even if the recommendation wasn’t paid, why would I believe they even knew what they were writing about?

So I seeked out a thousand comments on a hundred blogs in ten years, all of whom recommended a particular reviewer, forming a critique critique of sorts, a jumbled kaleidoscope of truth and lies. But the fact that they all recommended the same reviewer of washing machines only meant they were all deluded by the same advertising.

So I asked my “friend”, who knows a lot of things about washing machines, or at least has the appearance of knowing, the cadence of voice, the air of authority, the social role of “person who knows things”. But I doubted this “friend” of mine, because in a complex life full of trade-offs they always gave a simple answer. “This Samsung washing machine is good enough,” he’d say, except that sometimes he’d be tactless enough to add “for everyone”.

Feedback from the Joy of Writing group

• Reads like a review
• Limits of skepticism