Share, But Don’t Spoil

Have you seen Sugar on AppleTV+? If you like detective stories or mysteries, you'll probably dig it. I don't want to say much more about the show other than that I absolutely enjoyed it.

And herein lies the problem with our more personal internet: recommendations are really hard. We've been trained to look at reviews, read synopses, and pretty much know we'll like a thing before giving it our time or money.

As I plan next year's trip to Japan, I'm reading a lot of travel guides, recommendations, and suggestions. While it's a lot of fun, it also takes some of the excitement of discovery out of the equation. Will the experience in person match that of the perfectly curated photograph? Most likely, but it's different from just stumbling upon something and being suprised.

Reading about things ahead of time is a difficult trade-off. Sort of just getting there and jumping on a train and seeing what happens, there's a level of planning that goes into trip planning. (And, yes, I realize that for some of you, this is the ideal type of vacation.)

The same is true for anything that we invest our time or money in. Both resources are limited and we have access to seemingly unlimited information to help us make a good decision. While this philosophy makes sense for things like buying shirts or testing recipes, it doesn't work the same for experiences.

We've gotten way too comfortable with letting algorithms tell us what we read, watch, and experience. It's time to start trusting people to give us recommendations again.

Will human recommendations always deliver a great experience? Probably not. But, as we take back the internet, we need to trust each other a bit more. With all of that said, our recommendations can't spoil the experience.

It's easy to tell people they'll like something because something happens or because of a certain angle. But that will diminish that person's experience.

Sugar is a great show, but I don't want to tell you more about it so you have a similar experience. I want to know what I might encounter on my Japan trip, but I don't want to plan it out to where the experience is diminished.

It's a balance we all have to strike, and some of us will be more comfortable with detail-free recommendations than others. But that's the power of a more personal internet — we can make it anything we want. I want an internet with trusted recommendations from humans. What kind of internet do you want?

Recommendation Requests

I'm looking for recommendations in the Hakone and Five Lakes areas of Japan. I want to spend a few days near Mount Fuji next spring and will take any and all suggestions.