I’ve been sitting on this idea for some weeks now: what if denizens of the internet had the opportunity to swipe left or right as one does on Tinder, but with product photos instead of profiles? What maniacal algorithm would play the role of sentient product photo swiping left or right on the consumer?
This may seem an improbable notion, but it is well within the bounds of possibility in the world of WRD DSRPTR. For here we find a particularly seductive gamification of the consumer experience, one designed to be addictive like a slot machine. And the implied protagonist is either responsible for matching the product photos to the consumer — using whatever algorithm, and with whatever product photos culled from his his business or multiple businesses across the internet — or is himself the consumer matching with the product photos, ever curious to know which products “like” him.
We might take a moment to consider the design of this matching service. Is it effectively a novel marketplace? That is, is it in fact consolidating myriad products from myriad businesses on one platform, rather than exclusively selling its own? Or is it like GearLaunch, a host platform and mass producer of merchandise where anyone can upload a mock-up of a t-shirt and allow the host platform to drop-ship it with without ever laying eyes on the product sold? And again, what of the revenue model? Does the matching service take a cut of each sale made following a match? Or offer paid services to the consumer to bolster his own profile? Or simply collect the user’s metadata and sell this information, more or less anonymized, to data brokers at a profit? Or perhaps all three?
Suffice it to say the possibilities for making a buck are there to be had. But we should clarify one matter. As tempting as it is to understand “ally” and “patriot” as indicative of individual people, this matching service strikes me as not being engaged in the the matching of individuals at all — for pedestrian or salacious reasons — but rather in matching the individual that is the consumer to an item of merchandise for sale. Insofar as this holds, “ally” and “patriot” appear to be tags, or even master tags, appended to the product photos for the reason that the products themselves will mirror the self-identification of the consumer himself as an “ally” or a “patriot.” For when the consumer appends such tags to his own profile, assuredly the algorithm connects those tags with the same tags elsewhere in the program.
April 29, 2022