A New Way To Recommend with OmList

What even is OmList?

OmList is an idea that is birthed from a number of things.

The universe started with what some say the “om” sound and we’re going to make the best list maker and recommender this world has known.

I wish we valued more how precious life is and the time we have with it. In my effort to try and solve this ephemeral, but ever-present lack, I tried to think of what is a new element of today that could blend these ideas of what connects humanity and tie it to this new “thing”/“being” we’re all collectively birthing: technology.

Steve Jobs was the last person I heard that was of a level of influence with a deep spiritual essence that with every fiber of his being was saying (to some extent), “tech needs to be beautiful on the outside and in.” And when all the engineers asked, “Why?” Because he said, ”the people using it will feel it, even if they can’t see it.” Again paraphrasing a lot of different things into that part.

I use technology because I too need to Uber to the airport or make a Resy for a restaurant.

But the technology feels so cold, empty of personality, this strange rigid thing that is eavesdropping on everything you do. It often feels like an agent for some other unobserved purpose.

My Purpose With OmList

I wanted to create an app that is part technology and part human. That the premise of it is participation, play, and discovery. I wanted to optimize our decisions and blend it with the purpose and meaning by which binds us all. A new form of software that is made with the intent of what makes us more us.

To not guess what you are, but based on other people’s “consented” influence and interaction to the app OmList will create. It’s function is to make connections and recommendations based off of those most similar to you.

Did you know that over 75% of critics are white men over the age of 50? That is what RottenTomatoes is, that is what MetaCritic is, and if you list anything other “taste-quality” determiner, it is a high likelihood that those are the demographics that determine its outputs.

The world is largely recommended to us by a preset of “chosen” people to direct our attention. And they are motivated by things like campaigns, gifts, or threats from movie studios. They are motivated by a lot that is not giving you something genuine. They are regurgitators of a hype-cycle controlled by interest groups to get you to consume something that you’ll feel the least upset about.

All recommendation engines are built to an average, “a thousand people say this is a 4.5 stars out of 5.” We as people should have other options that don’t constantly drag us to the middle to sell us products we don’t really like.

OmList is the antidote to a “mid” life. Don’t be in the middle, be you. We are starting with movies and hope to end with taste tribes. Taste Tribes are people that are most similar to your taste in movies or food, or travel destinations.

The questions I’m excited to figure out with this are—

How similar are we?

Is collective consciousness a thing?

Are there “taste copies” of us out there?

Each shuffled deck of cards is statistically likely to be the first time in history that assortment was ever made. That’s pretty crazy and that is what recommendation tools like yelp, google, netflix, etc. are trying to hack without you knowing by analyzing “tags” like genres, actors, watch time, and a lot of other inane data points that are so far from what I believe is actually valuable information.

I believe we as people are similar to other people on the planet more than what this machine will feed us because we liked “one” Marvel movie. Also, the app’s intent is to eventually be a bridge to those people in the world that you wouldn’t meet otherwise.

We Only Have So Much Time

Dunbar’s Number posits that a human being can only hold 125 people in their mind. 5 are the ones you interact with weekly. 20 that you interact with on a monthly basis and 100 that are your once-a-year meetups.

We are limited by our time and environments. You might be the quirky one in your group that is obsessed with musicals and slasher films from the 80s. Maybe you’re the board game friend. Maybe you’re the ceramics friend. We often have groups that have shared values, but not necessarily the same taste. Each group values different things in their environment. If you were to think of tribes, each person specializes to create value, to round out the whole. So if you’re the person that hunts buffalo, chances are you are a unique element in your Dunbar Group. These things evolve and change, but in theory, you’d be the farthest away socially from the other person that hunts buffalo.

Imagine it like two opposite magnets, their charge is to attract the opposite, not the same.

Also, you may not gel with people that are the most similar to you. It’s not really how people work, but the information you both have on what movies you care about the most is deeply valuable to each other.

I want to balance out the overly weighted-group consensus with self-consciousness.

In this world of ai and over-stimulation. I want to create something that is built off of our direct knowledge of what is happening. And it is something that every recommendation system is overlooking, over-complicating, and underestimating.

What is OmList’s Secret Sauce?

Lists.

Yep, lists.

I’m sure you’ve heard, “we are what we prioritize.” A list is the essence of a priority. And humans like making them. I’m sure you’ve seen dozens of times “Top 10 Lists” for every skew on the planet from movies to sewing needles.

My passion has been cultivating community since I can remember from the high school student body to being an RA to being a “node” in Hollywood. Helping people find the things/people/experiences that make life more beautiful is one of the most important things I’ve ever done.

What I’m Trying To Answer

I’m taking all of that knowledge of how we as people value things and am making a hypothesis.

OmList is the test of that.

I believe that based on working with our fun game-mode, tournament-style type way to judge things that “You” like the most, and don’t like the most. You will create a unique list and there is someone on the planet that will be the person most similar to your taste/list.

Imagine you could clone yourself and have one part of you move to London and the other stay in NY. The different environments affect the different things you experience, but you’re still the same person with the same taste. That is what the premise of this app is. How to get you closer to the things you love.

All the lifetimes we’d have to live to try every movie on Netflix, but with OmList you’d have other people with the same taste helping weed through the noise.

The person Rabbi Sacks says, “Faith [is] the ability to hear the music beneath the noise.”

OmList is here to help us find the music beneath the noise.

To give you back time.

To help you with the small decisions that add up to a life lived too much in processing.

This app is the analog way of influencing and seeing how we affect the world and how it can affect us.

We are not the average of humanity. We are the depths by which the time we have to explore.

I want you to be more of who you are and save the most valuable precious commodity in life, “time.”

Let’s get to the things we love faster, together, with OmList.