Amazon Knows

When I was younger, there was an Auburn football and baseball player named Bo Jackson, one of the best to ever play for Auburn University and one of the most famous football players to come out of Auburn University. When he went to play professionally in the NFL and MLB, he did a series of Nike ads with the slogan “Bo Knows.” Jackson was the first athlete in the modern era to play professional baseball and football in the same year. He was a suitable spokesman for Nike’s shoe geared toward an athlete engaged in more than one sport or with little time between activities to switch to sport-specific footwear. The premise behind the ads was that Bo knows everything and can do anything.

Like “Bo Knows,” it’s incredible what Amazon.com knows about us. Because I have Amazon Prime, I also have Amazon Music. One of the features of Amazon Music is a station called “My Soundtrack,” in which Amazon picks music they think you will like. When I was driving to meet my new apartment manager to sign my lease, I listened to the “My Soundtrack” station. All the songs it played were songs I could sing along to and knew all of the lyrics. The playlist it began to play went something like this:

• “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton
• “Son of a Preacher Man” by Dusty Springfield
• “Harper Valley PTA” by Jeannie C. Riley
• “You Don’t Have to Call Me Darlin'” by David Allan Coe
• “Ode to Billy Joe” by Bobbie Gentry
• “Islands in the Stream” by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton
• “Coal Miner’s Daughter” by Loretta Lynn
• “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” by Hank Williams
• “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton
• “Act Naturally” by Buck Owens

Those are the ones I can remember at the moment. I guess it knows me pretty well. I love classic country music. Though my taste in music can be rather eclectic at times, you can usually bet that I can sing along to it if it’s classic country.

Anyway, it’s amazing what information the internet gleams from us. Sometimes it’s downright scary. Amazon has a fantastic algorithm to determine what I might like, and TikTok is just as good about what I might like. The internet gods seem to know my taste in men and my nostalgia for classic country music. However, dating apps can’t seem to match me up with anyone who wants to match up with me. They need to work with Amazon and TikTok to get their algorithms to work a bit better.

In other news, I signed my new lease and will be moving into my apartment the first week of April. It is officially mine on April 1. I’m so excited, but now I have to get packed. Also, the pain from my dental work came and went all day yesterday. I ended up taking a sick day. I expect that I will be at the museum today working. I have a few things that I need to do, so I can’t take another day off. I haven’t been to the museum since Saturday, so I have some catching up to do.