Let’s play a game called: what did Jaya buy to get Amazon to suggest this to her? (There are no right answers.)
Large Cartoon Hands
“Bring Your Favorite Cartoon To Life.” Wear the Large Cartoon Hands and summon the spirits of the netherworld. Breathe the burden of terrible existence into Mr. Potato Head. Only $11.43.
My favorite soft-shelled turtle and domestic burdock soup 190gX30 cans
I’m on a very specific diet.
Frontier Natural Products 2540 Frontier Bulk Sarsaparilla Root – Indian, Cut & Sifted, 1 Lbs. I assume one night I got drunk and thought I should make my own sarsaparilla. I wonder what stopped me.
Cocktail Kingdom® “Schmallet” Ice Mallet
Literally, mallet schmallet.
Nipple Rings non pierce pair Non-Piercing Clip On Nipple Ring / Heart Design pair HO1950
Never commit to piercing your nipples until you test these on your specific nipple length and girth, apparently.
And just…this
Who’s the real American Sniper, ehh???
Tags: amazon, I have never had the desire to pierce my nipples so what is this, suggested list
Research for the bachelorette party piece? “Ladies!!! Come over at 7, we’ll try on some SASSY thongs and nipple rings, then we’ll wear these giant cartoon arms and smash things with mallets to remind ourselves that life should be a wacky caricature of reality.”
it’s a something of a recurring loop, since i tend to like and approve of the kind of stuff i like and approve of, but i’m continually proud of my amazon shopping suggestions.
well done here!
I’m gonna guess…that candle that smells like Chris Evans and the latest weird erotica book by Chuck Tingle?
*ahem* …..what candle that smells like Chris Evans?
This one
Actual review: “Imagine shirtless Chris Evans ripping a log in half. That’s what this smells like.”
(I own one and can confirm the accuracy of that statement
OMG I found some of the tumblr posts that started this all and it’s amazing: http://clarabeau.tumblr.com/post/118886683102/the…
ahahahahaha this is amazing, thank you for sharing!
Now the Yankee Candle tumblr is my new favorite tumblr.
OMG I just found out that there are Yankee Candle stores in Canada YAAASSSSSSSSS
Amazon once suggested that I might like some Ninja Throwing Knives. Since I have never bought any kind of weapon, they might feel like I need to think of my self defense needs
I just checked my recommendations, and it’s all cordless phones and children’s picture books. Is Amazon Canada boring, or am I? (I fear I know the answer.)
For all that data Amazon should have on my purchasing habits by now, their suggestions for me are about as useful as giant cartoon hands. If they do ever manage to suggest something I’d like, it’s because I’ve already bought it or put it on a wishlist.
But do they ever suggest anything truly funny? No. They’re boringly wrong!
Amazon keeps telling me to buy Joe Manganiello’s book, which is awesome, and 50 Shades of Grey, which is not.
I definitely need the Large Cartoon Hands!
Interesting that there’s a correlation between American Sniper and frilly men’s thongs. What stories the Amazon data miners must have to tell us…
Why does Amazon know I want a hot stir plate and magnetic bars for stirring sauces, science-style? I have never researched this. I just have dreams.
I also want this now. There are so many things from my brief college lab job that would be awesome in my kitchen (yes, giant fume-sucking hood thing to be used for frying).
I’ve completely dedicated my life to clicking on everything that is suggested to me on Amazon. Good times.
You look at a 40 pound bag of dehydrated cereal marshmallows once and it’s all you get recommended for the rest of your life. (It’s okay, Amazon. I know you know I really want them, but haven’t been able to commit. Someday.)
I’ve been pegged for: insect repellent in many forms (bracelets! candles! sprays!), a bunch of hands-free phone devices for the car (we don’t own a car – WHAT was Spouse looking at to prompt THAT recommendation?!?) and…..oven mitts. Random, thy name is Amazon.
About a year ago Facebook suddenly started throwing loads of underwear ads at me. This was actually great, as my news feed was suddenly full of muscular men wearing very little, but it did make me wonder what I’d been searching for…
Mine are always “other books by the author who wrote the last book you purchased from us, and only that author.” Currently, John Le Carre’s entire bibliography, despite the fact that 90% of the books I read are sci-fi or history.
This. Or, “other books by the author who wrote the last book you purchased from us, and the entire bibliography of one other author who is a bestseller in that genre right now even though their books bear no resemblance to any books you’ve purchased in the past.” I add one fantasy novel to my wishlist and suddenly it’s GRRM-central in my Amazon recs…
I tend to get “I see you’ve purchased book #8 in this series. Would you be interested in books 1-7?”
Ugh, I recently bought Hugh Howey’s Silo books, and now 75% of my recommendations are the “Amazon Worlds” or whatever they are calling it, of people who have written books based in that universe. I don’t think so.
First thought upon seeing those hands was “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared” so now I’m terrified and intrigued what it was that suggested those.
wonder woman underoos, rabbit hutches, and trumpet mouthpieces. All actual things I have purchased. And the life changing tidying up book, which I am sure I only clicked to make fun of.
Amazon needs a “I just clicked on this as a joke” button to better calibrate its data.
And/or a “Look, I clicked on this because someone made a comment like ‘haha what I need is one of these‘ with no further explanation and hovering over the link conveyed no information about what ‘these’ might be because Amazon links are just strings of gibberish, I don’t want a humidifier, I just needed to know that it was a humidifier to get the joke.”
EVERY website needs the “I just clicked on this as a joke” button!
…. I think it’s 80% possible I may know you in real life. Do you live in Boston?
Nope, Cleveland. I just happened to own two rabbits, and rent a home from the 4H rabbit club leader…so we have 5 now. I’ll drive one to you if you’d like, though!
(I totally should have spent the money on more official-looking underoos, I got the knockoffs. They are not filling the hole from my childhood)
Well, if you ever visit Boston, I have a cool friend you should meet who also owns Wonder Woman underoos and likes rabbits!
I love Cleveland! (I went to school there and lived there for 8 years). I forget if we talked before about all the ethnic restaurants and other wonders of Cleveland– I go back there every so often with my boyfriend, to eat things and stock up on Hungarian garlic sausage. I miss it a lot!!
I’m not in the market for a pet rabbit at the moment, sadly, but my boyfriend used to have one who was great. He liked sitting on our feet and watching TV with us.
YES! Cleveland is the best! I went to school there too and still live here and I love it.
(I mostly lurk, by the way, but for Cleveland love I have to post.)
They still make Wonder Woman Underoos?? BRB, checking out Amazon! I had the Wonder Woman ones as a kid, and would love a grown-up pair! Complete with little girl undershirt/tank top hopefully.
Alas, I hit my growth spurt JUST before they came out with underoos, and thus, got to watch all my friends, siblings, and cousins wear them patriotically as costumes during the 4th of July parade while I got to be Betsy Ross. Again. I just might be making up for it by building my own Thor costume, and embarrassing my teenage boys. Just maybe.
They make all sorts of superhero undies, and I now wear almost nothing but those. Also, me and my bestie made up a song about them, using the wonderwoman theme tune. Wonder WO-MAN, on my Cro-OTCH!
I have a sideline in doing covers for self-published books. The majority of my clients write paranormal and other genre romance and I foolishly started doing my research on covers that sell while logged in under my own name and now I can’t look at Amazon in the presence of my in-laws for fear of having to explain my Suggested Based on Your Browsing selections.
I keep forgetting to switch to my author account when I’m browsing other romance covers (I write contemporary self-pub), so when my spouse had to learn never to Amazon from his work computer lest all the others at the university give him looks.
If you go to your recommendations page you can click “why recommended?” underneath a couple of those books, it’ll pop up the item you browsed or purchased that led to them suggesting that, then you can click the “don’t use for recommendations” button and see if that helps.
Once, on my corporate account where I was buying books about clinical endocrinology and nanomolecular engineering, Amazon suggested I needed a Sexy Librarian costume. To this day, I’m not sure if I should be insulted or flattered.
Handheld vacuum cleaners, an entire row of Yankee candles because I clicked a link earlier in this thread before checking my Amazon suggestions, bath pillows (??? because I purchased a bathtub drain cover six months ago maybe?), and, wayyyyy at the bottom of the page, a pair of Captain America shield earrings. I have no idea why. I’ve literally never even searched for Avengers anything on Amazon.
Pretty sure the Captain America earrings are based on the candle (extrapolating from people who would buy a candle that smells like Chris Evans)
Bulk quantity of mineral oil, 6-piece jewelers’ screwdriver kit, 15-foot connector hose remnants (colors may vary), the Birdman original motion picture soundtrack, David Brook’s The Road to Character, 3-ounce plastic cups. Where in the name of all that is good and decent did I go so horribly wrong in my life? What dark paths have I walked to end up in this bleak place?
hmm. So, you’re a safecracker who moonlights as a mob enforcer, but secretly harbors desires to reform your character, so reads David Brooks while listening to movie soundtracks and drinking jello shots.
Now I’m really glad I didn’t click on that “55-gallon drum of lube” that everyone was making fun of on Prime Day…
My wife uses my Amazon account. Checking my recommendations: Ininji toe socks, Icebreaker women’s Sprite hot pants, and Shock Doctor extra capacity mouth guard. This gives me a whole new appreciation for the woman I married!
I was costumer for my high school’s production of Twelfth Night, and I bought pieces through my family’s Amazon account.
Long story short, Malvolio needed stripper pants, and so our suggestions were mainly thongs for the next 6 months.
Explaining that to my parents was interesting.
Nothing but protein powders and children’s books! (I am a vegan [aspiring] weightlifter with a brand-new niece.)
Mine’s all dog food and romance novels, so the algorithms know me well.
Dessicated liver capsules, sooooooo….
I have added Large Cartoon Hands to my wish list. As soon as I figure out what to do with them, they’re mine.
Did anybody else just spend some money they weren’t planning on spending, then saw something perfect in the reccomendations? ‘Cos I got a brand new door sign just winging its way to me now.
I bought ONE pair of fingerless gloves recently (because I am an eternal pseudogoth teenager) and my suggestions immediately filled up with Homestuck cosplay items. Welp.
Other than that, it’s underwear, candy, and acne soap. I refuse to believe that the last two could be at all related.
My suggestion list is all gardening and chicken care books, spiced with D&D manuals and Ursula K Le Guin. For the record, I bought one “Build your own sheds” book recently and a D&D manual about 10 years ago. But I do garden, own chickens, and read sci-fi/fantasy so I think it is looking at my cookies.
Earlier this week my suggestion row was 100% Ruth Bader Ginsburg, from serious books about her to Notorious RBG t-shirts. I have no idea what I searched for.
My suggested items include several “nut milk bags.” Yes, I did just buy a tofu press but I’m going to pass on squeezing my own nut milk for right now. NUT MILK.
The phrase “nut milk” makes me convulse involuntarily every time I read it in my head. And then I keep re-reading it, in case it stops making me convulse and I need to know. For Science.
Mostly I snicker because I am a 30 yo woman with the humor of an 8 yo boy.
What drives me nuts is how, if you buy something large and expensive from them, like a vacuum cleaner, they immediately start recommending other vacuum cleaners. I ALREADY HAVE A BRAND NEW ONE, THANKS, AS YOU SHOULD WELL KNOW. I mean, I can see if I buy a book by an author, I might very quickly be in need of another book by that author, or a similar kind of book, because books are like potato chips, you read one, and you immediately want to read another, but large home appliances, not so much.
My sister-in-law actually used to work for the company that created the recommendation software for Amazon, and I have never had the guts to ask her why they did not seem to understand that this was a problem with their algorithm. Surely they should be able to create some kind of class of objects where, once you’ve bought it, you’re not going to want exactly another one, but might be interested in something similar (like, I don’t know, Dustbusters or Swiffers–“hey, we’ve got a house-cleaning sucker on our hands–time to offload all the dusting and floor care products on the shelves!” “Nah, let’s just encourage her to buy more massive appliances she already owns.”).
Vacuums aside, one of my favorites was, after buying flannel sheets from Amazon, I was suddenly being recommended Men’s Big and Tall clothing all the time.
Oh man, you guys, my boyfriend just used my Amazon Prime account to order a book entitled Player’s Handbook (Dungeons and Dragons) so I can’t WAIT to see what kind of recommendations this causes. The confirmation email already suggested that I may be interested in checking out The Dungeon Master’s Guide, which is not, sadly, about constructing/caring for your own S&M-type home dungeon. My D&D knowledge stops at knowing what the letters D and D stand for, so you can tell bf and I have wildly different hobbies.