Defined By Consumerism?

Anyone else get creeped out by how well various web-shopping places know you?

You know what I mean, right? Maybe you purchased some Christmas gifts for the family who lived far away or could save money against what you'd pay locally or ordered something for a friend's birthday...

...and then you signed up with an e-mail address and then they--more or less--make recommendations of items you might like based on what you purchased as well as various items you may have "browsed." I'm guessing they also have some way of determining what else you might want to buy based on what other people purchased or browsed against whatever you did.

Each and every time I log on and click "recommendations" or "recommended for you" (and some even do it by laser-focused categories, like "new-in-paperback selections for you" or "blues music selections for you") I'm kinda disturbed by how well these folks have me pegged. Most of the time my reaction is, "Wow. I didn't even know that was out yet, and I'll have to add that to my list of things for Christmas." I imagine this to be due to a very narrow (re: predictable & consistent) shopping habits as well as a highly specialized (re: lots of money put into reasearch & now trying to recoup their investment in that system) analysis/marketing software.

So, after sifting through the stuff I've browsed/purchased for gifts and such, here are the major recommendations for me from the three major web sites I purchase from (all widely used by most on-line shoppers) and I'm wondering what they say about my purchasing/consuming life...

...and, by extension...

...me.

The Gum Thief: A Novel by Douglas Coupland. He's the guy who got famous for writing Generation X and I do have all of his works (except for the one Kid1 lost somewhere) so this was a pretty easy one for the marketers. It's new, only released last week. Interestingly, one of the reviews said, "If you currently feel jaded and like your life is going nowhere, buy this novel. It won't help, but it's nice." Hmmmm.

Irresistable Revolution by Shaine Claiborne. It's a religious book, which my recommendations are loaded with all sorts of this stuff. What's interesting is that most of them come up because "This book was recommended because you purchased Blue Like Jazz." The tag line reads, "Jesus was homeless, and He said what we did for the least of these His brothers we did for Him, and the thesis of Shane Claiborne's book is that, when Jesus said these things, He wasn't kidding."

Live by R.E.M. I have to admit I felt kind of cool because I've always thought hipsters listened to R.E.M. It simply happened that I liked 'em...but I do think that they are one of a handful of bands that came along during the decade of the 80's that people could look back on and say that some truly great & influential music came out of that span of time. You know, it's the GenX-er response to Baby Boomers who crow all the time about the Beatles/Stones/Joplin/Hendrix and then pooh-pooh your music. I think R.E.M. is a pretty good, inarguable response to that, but not as accepted as when you fire off "U2." I don't know about them live, though. I've seen them twice...and wasn't impressed. But that was before they did arenas and such so I'm sure they're better now.

Live at Lollapalooza, 2007 by Pearl Jam. One of my major disappointments is that I never saw two of my favorite bands in person: Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I can still catch Pearl Jam and hope to at some point. I wouldn't be likely to buy this one, though...I've got most of these songs on another live CD of theirs or various other CD's.

Greatest Hits by Social Distortion. Too easy for their little marketing thing. A blind guy with one eye could see that this would come up for me. I'd be much more likely to buy the two new songs since I have pretty much all the rest--but one of those songs is "album only" so I might could be persuaded. Has it really been 25 years since the release of their first record? Wow. Punks age, huh?

Then there's Garmin 350 Pocket Vehicle GPS Navigator with Maps for North America. This is funny to me because I don't buy gadgets at all, really. I haven't spent anything near what this bad boy would cost if you added up all my purchases together at this site, and I rarely go anywhere that I don't know where the roads go...and I have a $2.00 map in the glove box of both Dallas and Fort Worth, so I'm covered just in case I take a wrong turn. Sheesh.

So, that was my top few things (I did slice out items that were recommended because of purchases for others, like the teen-friendly DVD's or wine-related gifts or travel purchases or kid books--as well as the occasional out-of-character one-time guilty pleasure purchase. You know what all gets recommended if you purchased Millennium Funk Party?). I'll leave it to others to interpret the data, folks. These are just the informative picks they made for me, man.