Monday, December 17, 2007

You Are What (Shamelessly Partisan Things) You Buy

This is from an article in The Chronicle about the dangers of personalizable media:
Every year filtering and niche marketing become more sophisticated and refined. Studies show that on Amazon, many purchasers can be divided into "red-state camps" and "blue-state camps," and those who are in one or another camp receive suitable recommendations, ensuring that people will have plenty of materials that cater to, and support, their predilections.

Here’s a fun “thought experiment.”* I’ll make up an anonymous Amazon customer’s cart, and you try to identify his (or her) state color:

Hazelnut biscottis
Wilco CD
fair-trade scarf
Frieda Kahlo wall calendar
bike light
carbon steel wok
Ann Coulter's If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans
Apples 2 Apples.

Don’t you feel as if you’ve known that person for years? That’s because I just painted for you what creative writers call a “word picture.” You can thank me later.

*still not sure I understand what a thought experiment is.

1 comment:

Piefinger said...

After reading this post, Elizabeth sent me an email that said "why does she get to be so much smarter than me?"

When we got back to our apartment we found that the Wilco CD I ordered from Amazon had finally arrived.