Weird, Madness, Chaos

Letterboxd has a very strange feature on their account stats page which shows you the "nanogenres" you have watched the most of in the current calendar year. Perplexingly, the stats page does not explain what a nanogenre is. You have to go this Letterboxd blog post to learn what a nanogenre might be, and surprise: it's kind of bullshit. They are working with a market research firm to slap adjectives on movies. Nanocrowd groups films based on the language that audiences employ when describing—both in Letterboxd reviews and elsewhere online—the themes and moods of the movies we consume. Basically, they word-clouded our reviews, or something. I'm sure that this might be useful for some market researchers under certain conditions, but Big Data has never done anything for my movie-watching life, particularly when the big data is trying to recommend me a movie. I often find the algorithmic stuff on big video streaming platforms to be distracting and overwhelming - I can easily get stuck…