Monday, June 16, 2008

gay man trapped in a straight woman's body









So anyone who's ever used an online service like amazon or netflix knows how they use your previous rental/purchase/search history to give you recommendations about things you may be interested in. Amazon usually recommends the obvious like you bought a book by John Grisham here's another book by John Grisham that you would like. Or they aim very stereotypical with things like you looked at video games we bet you like all video games. Or you looked at a shirt with a shoe on it I bet that you have two feet and enjoy buying shoes to cover them. Amazon isn't a great one for showing you things that would be eye opening or something that you now love after seeing it but wouldn't of known it existed without it being recommended to you. One thing I do like about amazon's recommendation system is that since I've bought DVDs from amazon it tells me when they have DVD sales especially on seasons of TV shows.



Any who I'm getting a bit off topic. What the headline refers to is the curious recommendations given to me by netflix and later Hollywood video.



I watch my share of DVDs and online movies/shows from netflix. I used to be on the 4 DVDs at a time plan but later scaled down to 2 at a time when i realized i wasn't watching them very quickly. At work I'm able to watch the instant viewing offerings. They help make a slow night go by a bit faster. In fact I'm watching one in the background while typing up this post. I love netflix's recommendations! I watch a lot of various genres and languages of films. I never thought anything would be able to get my movie watching history into some sort of order and organization so that it would be able to give me very accurate recommendations for the most part. I'd say netflix's recommendations tend to swing somewhere in the ballpark of 90% win. Netflix knows I love french films starring
Audrey tatou and old jimmy Stewart & Doris day films.



Lately as I've browsed through the recommendations netflix gives me I've noticed that more and more of them fall under the gay & lesbian category. Now looking through the recommendations in that category I'm noticing the ones recommended to me all have men on the cover and deal with the stories of coming out, love, and other topics all relating to gay men. At first I was all wtf? Who does netflix think I am? I'm a straight woman and it keeps serving up stores about living life as a gay man in today's world. Don't get me wrong netflix. I'm not homophobic and I do love men but I am not a man. Also I'm pretty sure you are right in saying that I would like some of these films/shows.



Yesterday night I went to Hollywood video down the street from my house. They have this new zoltar psychic gimmick thing that is supposed to recommend you a list of movies that you will enjoy based on your rental history. Also if you do it you get a neat coupon, mine was rent one get one free. For the curious I rented the planet (for my dad), the bucket list (on blu-ray for myself), and lars and the real girl (for me and my sis Sam). Any who before I rented anything I got the recommendations print out. I wish I would've saved it to post here. It had recommended to me shows such as queer as folk among others.






When I was looking for a picture for this blog I found this pic of Don Cheadle and I just liked it so much I had to post it even though Don Cheadle is not gay.



After the Hollywood video thing I've decided I'm going to accept being a gay man trapped in a straight woman's body. I love men, musicals, documentaries about the coming out experience, and have great taste. I will watch foreign films that tend to be more explicit in regards to many things including the areas of sex. I will sing about
angry inches and laugh/relate to Margaret cho jokes on a personal level. I will continue to watch LOGO especially when it has Margaret cho or the scissor sisters on. I will continue to love every episode of "can't get a date" whether gay/straight and I will continue to believe that all people deserve the same rights. I will fight stereotypes, homophobes, and conservatives who believe that the LGBT community shouldn't exsist or shouldn't have equal rights.

I guess what I'm trying to say is...

I'm not afraid to say i'm a gay man trapped in a straight woman's body. Yeah I've just come out of the GMTIASW'sB closet. I guess me and netflix are gonna go on a trip to California and get our gay marriage on. Wait... is netflix even a dude?



p.s. if you have netflix check out coming out stories in the instant viewing section. good stuff. some of it is very cry worthy.



UPDATE: After watching the documentary "super high me" I've also noticed that netflix also thinks that i'm a stoner. It says I will give high (heh, high) marks to shows like weeds and super high me (which I did for super high me). I don't know what it is about me but I get the whole "stoner" thing from people in real life too. I've never smoked anything let alone pot in my life but I get asked by people every so often if I do get high. People that know me think it's hilarious that someone would even ask that about me. So yeah if you were gonna ask the answer is: no I don't, nor have I ever, get high and I can't reccomend you to a good dealer so don't ask.

UPDATE: 7/17/09 Just fixed some formatting issues on this post. Never noticed the change in fonts sizes til' I went to post a new blog and checked out how it looked.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well said.