No one ever reads or watches what I recommend (that’s a lie, one person does). I usually don’t expect others to engage with my interests, I wouldn’t hold a grudge if they don’t. But it upsets me when this occurs in the event of exchanging recommendations with someone who ends up not reciprocating. This has happened on four separate occasions with different people. While I’d actually read the book, give my opinion and genuinely engage with them, they would postpone doing so and constantly make excuses until they think I’ve forgotten. One time I made a promise with a friend to watch a series of their choice and vice versa, guess who did and who didn’t (“My internet connection is so bad” you’re literally watching other shows as we speak…)

This begs the question: are my recommendations this bad? I’d like to put that to the test. Here are the recommendations in question:

  • KuroXppi [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    6·
    15 days ago

    I think most people take ‘recommendation’ to mean endorsement like a little thumbs up that you put next to a given book/show/movie. As in ‘person x said this show was good, I’ll keep it in mind’ rather than ‘person x said this is good, I’ll add it to the top of my list’.

    I get ‘recommended’ stuff by people, unprompted, all the time. Stuff I can’t even watch because I don’t have any streaming platforms (I watch occasionally at my parents’ place). Or games I can’t play because I don’t own that console, or don’t want to pay or go to the effort of pirating.

    If everyone chased up on their reccos after giving them I would be pissed off, if I watched everything everyone recommended also wouldn’t have time to do any of the other things I do other than watching/consuming media.

    I think it also goes when people are asking for recommendations, they aren’t taking a single recco as a straight up ‘this is going on my list’ rather they may be crowdsourcing, and then putting things higher on the list they hear more frequently.

    Also, people may receive a recommendation, do further independent research about it and decide it’s not for them, in which case that’s fine too.