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Basically, Rotten Tom's Tomatometer stopped "working" for me at one point. I watched like 3+ 100% movies in a row over a year and they were all boring as hell, for me. Sure enough though, the flicks were highly regarded. So, what was going on?

3/6/26, 12:59 pm0 reposts0 likes

I eventually realized it was this: the films weren't great. They were safe. No critic watched them and thought, "wow, I can't recommend this to people". They were vanilla.

I'm not criticizing the films or vanilla (it's my favorite flavor), it's not derogatory. Vanilla's an incredibly exotic thing. Extracting it is a culinary milestone. BUT - it's very safe. You can put it in most sweet things and it works. So, it's easy to recommend.

The problem here is that "easy to recommend" means that it's inoffensive, not that it's ideal. And that's why recommendation algorithms suck - they're primed to fulfill success criteria, and that means they hedge against failure.