[hombre_fatal]

Maybe recommendations are harder than we think because our tastes are too arbitrary and unpredictable. Maybe overlapping with someone else's tastes actually predicts nothing about whether there are any more places we will overlap, so it's not the simple data processing problem that we wish it to be.

I've tried all sorts of "people who liked X also enjoyed Y" book and movie lists and it never seems any better than a generic list of decent books and movies.

One of my favorite movies is The Arrival. To me, it's one of the best love stories ever told. Yet when I meet other people who really liked the movie, that wasn't the main draw for them. Perhaps it was the intrigue of the time travel or watching interesting characters navigate a complex conflict or perhaps they liked the provocative questions that it explores.

Perhaps two people liking The Arrival says little about what they have in common at all, thus there's actually no data to go off beyond recommending both parties more critically acclaimed movies. I suspect that this might be the cold reality of recommendations.

[smartbit]

Belgium Canvas has several superb movies and series, every week, year-in year-out. Humans select them, not software. Selecting movies/shows is a profession and I’m positive that many people can learn it.

When I meet people with seemingly the same taste, usually we exchange our trophies, eg my latest

  This is going to hurt (series) - 2022 - UK
  En man som heter Ove - 2015 - Sweden
  All That Breathes - 2022 - India
  Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles - 1975 - Belgium

[hombre_fatal]

Your shows all seem to have a 7.5+ IMDB rating which means pretty much everyone should probably give them a chance if they like the genre/synopsis. (I certainly will, thanks.)

The idea of a recommendation engine in these comments is generally a holy grail that can predict shows you will like personally that aren't necessarily well-rated by other people. Shows that don't simply show up in the platform's "critically acclaimed" section.

Though your post is a good example of why word of mouth recommendations are important. Netflix could have the best recommendation system in the world yet it cannot recommend any of the great shows it doesn't have to show you.

[JohnFen]

Also, what appeals to us is heavily dependent on our mood and situation at the moment. There are many times when something appeals to me heavily one day, and not at all another day.

[brokenmachine]

Even on those different days, I can still recognize a show that I might like to watch on another day though.

On youtube I put those in my Watch Later list.

[roboy]

I have seen it getting worse and worse over the last years and also I have watched so much on these platforms that I‘d think the signal should stand out no matter the underlying reason for it.