Amazon's 'tag' scheme may have its drawbacks

[tree_and_leaf]

I was looking for information on Lukardis of Oberweimar - thirteenth century nun, visionary, and (partially self-inflicted) stigmatic, and discovered that she's discussed in Aviad Kleinberg's Prophets in Their Own Country, which is sadly only available in Freiburg in libraries without power sockets and no loans, but that's by the way. It's a solid academic text, very heavily in the 'sainthood is a social construct negotiated between an individual and the wider community' camp, but against the heavily typological method of classifying saints (' lives), because it's the eccentric little differences between them that is often the most informative.†

My eye was then caught by Amazon US' new tagging system, which is an interesting idea, but I suspect will not, in practice, prove all that useful:


Tags Customers Associate with Similar Products:
cult (394)
fraud (367)
junk science (311)
avoid at all costs (293)
evil (293)
insane (287)
crazy (276)
religion (268)

† In which he's right, although from a theological standpoint I should point out that there are two senses in which someone may be a saint. The first - and theologically the more relevant - is in salvation, regeneration, closeness to God, in which sense Paul could write letters to the saints at Ephesus and else where, or, narrowing the category a little, you can use it of all blessed souls in heaven. That doesn't fit Kleinberg's sense. But when one uses it of the everyday sense of 'the saints', that is those individuals who the church celebrates liturgically, then he's right, although one should of course add that cults or commemorations can and do develop around people who would, in life, have raised their eyebrows at the idea, or, indeed, people who never actually existed or have been confused with someone else.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO
I love the cool way you listed the "tags". As for Saints, there is a certain amount of interlap in that people who have an extraordinary and constructive influence on communities, like St.Patrick or St.John Bosco, may be seen both as moral exemplars and as societal leaders.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I think this is probably about as useful as 'People who bought this also bought [X]', not to mention their rec lists, which still seem to assume that everything with Druid or Witchcraft or Shaman in the title is much of a muchness, so that if you've at some point ordered anything by Ronald Hutton or Owen Davies, you get repeatedly inundated with woo-wooness.

Also, recently bought from them feminist/cultural studies book on the pin-up (turgid prose around a thesis I am finding increasingly problematic, if I understand it) and am now getting recs of lots of book on burlesque and stripping and so on, some of which may be worthwhile serious studies which I might even enjoy, and others which are probably sleazy hackery, but there is no way of telling which is which, really.

So the degree to which Amazon actually gets why people buy some books and not others - not much.

[juno-magic.livejournal.com]

avoid at all costs (293)

Brilliant.

[juno-magic.livejournal.com]

It gets REALLY funny when you share accounts or buy presents for people.

I remember that my husband once asked me about a few recommendations he'd received ... he was quite horrified. *cough* I don't think he really realised just what I'm reading ...

[lucullean.livejournal.com]

Perhaps if you read it backward there is a saranic message.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Or when they start recommending books on the basis of other purchases-in-common, such as computer items - I started to get some very creepy recs after I'd bought a phone upload cable from them.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Heh, it's getting that constellation of tags thanks to people helpfully rating all of the delightful works of one Mr. L. Ron Hubbard.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, my German Amazon recs have gone peculiar since I bought an external hard drive.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, certainly. Man is a social animal, and you can't divorce an individual from the context that produces them. It's more of a question of what angle you look at.

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh dear. Amazon is very good when you know what you want, but I've never found it particularly good for browsing, or it's recommendations particularly helpful (except when they remind me that a new book by an author I like is coming out, but that's much more straightforward). There's sometimes really no substitute for an actual bookshop!

I've had similar experiences with buying theological books - but even with non-academic Christian books, there's more diversity than the system can cope with. They don't, for instance, realise that the likelyhood of someone who has bought, say, 'The Christian Priest Today' (by a scholarly and mildly socialist Anglo-Catholic Archbishop) is almost certainly unlikely to want to read 'The Purpose Driven Life' (American, Evangelical, and aimed firmly at the conservative heartlands), even if both of them are, broadly, about vocations and What To Do When You Grow Up!

[tree_and_leaf]

That tag made my morning, though it's rather unfair to Prof. Kleinberg!

[tree_and_leaf]

I think that would give me a migraine long before it conjoured up a power of darkness!

[tree_and_leaf]

You reckon? I don't see the connection, but who knows...

Having scrolled down the page, the list of subjects 'being discussed in related forums' is possibly even scarier, especially the 5000+ thread beginning with the sub-literate statement about Mary's virginity (or lack thereof).

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Yes. That's the constellation of tags being applied to those works; unfortunately, when you then play linking games like the Amazon mechanism does, you get some rather odd results.

[tree_and_leaf]

That certainly illustrates the system's weirdness, then!

And also, thinking about it, explains the 'junk science' bit, which I didn't get at all, even assuming that the tagging was the work of Dawkins-type atheists on pious Catholic literature.

[penguinity.livejournal.com]

OMG. Totally want to use that now.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Yeah, tags play the game of "People have tagged this book with this set of tags; any book which shares enough tags with another book will pull up those associations as potentially applicable."

Given Anonymous' deeply charitable perspective on Dianetics...

>:)

[tree_and_leaf]

It's an amusing toy - I don't think it actually qualifies as useful, though!

[lucullean.livejournal.com]

I agree--satanic, even! oh lol.