Because Peyton is the right Manning for Bad QB League Play
Trust me, this isn’t really a post about American football or what not, but it’s tangentially related enough to put in the gif above. The origins of this post have to do with the whole process of trying to recommend a show to someone. Why does it have to be so hard?
After the first week of the NFL season had concluded last month, Aeroblip, the producer of the podcast of which I am a contributor, Anime Soapbox (still sadly lacking Crunchyroll and XBox sponsorship) and I made a wager. This is something that he had done with Kelloggs last year. Essentially, it’s the winner in the fantasy football league matchup gives the loser a show they must watch for review. Let’s see how my team Hidan no Arians AA (named for Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians in case you think I’m some sort of spelling-challenged national socialist) did this week:
So as of this writing that would be a win because wide receivers generally don’t score NEGATIVE FIFTY-ONE POINTS. Which now leads me into the question of what sort of show do I recommend to Aeroblip?
I talked to Kelloggs, who won their respective bet last time, and he ended up giving him Sakura Trick because he wanted to give Aeroblip a show outside that he liked and outside of his usual preferences. The feedback afterward was less positive than trying to run a football play 2-on-4.
My history of recommending shows to people other than Aeroblip has been pretty spotty. There was that time I recommended Itsudatte! My Santa out of spite. There was the time that Flawfinder basically rage quit on Anime Secret Santa because of what I gave him. Needless to say, I’m not exactly in tune to most people’s tastes in things.
It reminds me of one of the little points of emphasis with the various music streaming services that are out there. A lot was made of Apple having hand-curated (whatever the hell that means) playlists for customers to give them music they would like. On the other hand, there is Spotify that uses an algorithm to match a user’s taste to those of others and uses what was playlisted by similar users to build a suggested playlist. The former ends up being way too conservative in selections while the latter has consistency issues. There should be a middle ground somewhere, but I think moneyed interests will prevent it from happening there.
Yep, my taste again.
Meanwhile in anime, there’s no money to be fighting over, so it should be easier to come up with some sort of solution for anime recommendation. I mean I can’t be trusted with one of the shows I came up with on my own. Why can’t there be something out there where I can just put in some shows and ratings and it will spit me out the perfect show? Why do people have to be so subjective? If I had the time of day I would probably come up with something, but I have a job to fulfill and it would be a second job for no money.
I’ll have to trust my gut on this one I’m afraid.
