WTF, Etsy? Again!?

     Hey, a sequel post! :P

    So, I posted before about Etsy's algorithm doing weird stuff, putting in recommendations for things that are totally unlike anything I've been looking at/buying.

    Well, it's still at it.

    Here's my recent activity feed on the main page:

    As before, it's all MDZS merch, most of it cuddly romantic images of the two leads, and most of it in cute chibi versions at that.  (For those who happen upon this post unaware, MDZS is short for Mo Dao Zu Shi, typically translated as The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, a danmei novel (the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese genre called Boy's Love), and the basis of the very popular (and excellent) live-action drama The Untamed.)

    Now, my most recent purchase, admittedly, was not MDZS.  It was a bit of Persona 5 fan art:

    You will note that again, it's cute, chibi, and depicts the true love between two male characters.  (And yes, I feel justified in calling it true love, even though the game as it is does not allow you to romance Fox, because there's way too much evidence that he was originally supposed to be not merely a romanceable character, but the romanceable character.  I am intractable on this point.  Joker/Fox (or Fox/Joker, whichever floats your boat) simply is love.)

    So...the recommended items on the top of the page were a mix of MDZS and MegaTen items, which is reasonable enough, especially since I've bought MegaTen fan merch on Etsy before, and will certainly do so again.  (MegaTen is short for Megami Tensei, the super-series that the Persona series is part of, though in the US it's all released as Shin Megami Tensei, which is technically incorrect, because that is itself a different sub-series.)

    But lower on the page, it picks out a few "categories" that it thinks you're interested in, and points out some examples within those categories that it thinks you'll like.  And here's where it gets very messed up.  Because these are the ones it showed me:

    Again, I can only say "WTF, Etsy?!?"

    I do not buy things that sexualize women.  (I mean, not unless you count Barbie dolls.  And that is a very different level of sexualization than we're talking about here.)  And I haven't bought anything that could even remotely count as an action figure from Etsy since 2019!  I've bought some acrylic standees recently...but they were romantic ones depicting two men.  (Mostly Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, the leads of MDZS, of course, but I also bought a fantastic one a while back depicting the versions of Patroclus and Achilles from the game Hades.)  I may have looked at a few figures/figurines since then, but those were more MDZS merch.

    Furthermore, while much of what I've bought has been romantic, none of it has been erotic, so why is it showing me things that are so NSFW that the site feels the need to censor them?  (A few of the shops I've followed do sell some NSFW items, but only ones depicting men.)

    I mean, I guess I get it, to a certain extent.

    Persona has become a very popular series since it was restructured with the release of Persona 3, and Persona 5 is especially popular.  And there is a broad misunderstanding within our culture of gaming as the near-exclusive domain of the heterosexual male, especially the subset of heterosexual males who cannot obtain the love of real women, and thus pour out their desires onto absurdly sexualized representations of women.  That subset certainly does intersect with the subset of the population of gamers in the Venn diagram of the general populace at large, but it is merely a small intersection, not a complete overlap.  The grotesque assumption that "gamer = horny straight male loser" is disgusting and repellent.

    You would think that their algorithm would at least get the difference between art depicting women for the male gaze and art depicting men for the female gaze (or for non-gender-specific gaze, like in the case of the Hades fan art I've bought).  Or if that's too much for it, it could at least note the difference between male-presenting characters and female-presenting characters.  I don't think that's too much to ask for!

    Sorry.

    I realize there's no actual point to this post aside from me complaining, but...sometimes you just have to say these things, somewhere, to someone, even if it's just shouting into the void like this.

    Besides, really, how does one chibi keychain of two male characters hugging lead to having the algorithm suggest that I'd be interested in an erotic statuette of a furry woman with her chests hanging out?  It makes no sense!!  (The oversize figure of a robot soldier from the Star Wars prequels also makes no sense, but at least it's not erotic.  Though actually I might prefer an attempt to eroticize those silly-looking things to some of what the site has been pushing at me.)

WTF, Etsy?

     Etsy really needs to improve its algorithm for recommendations.

    When you navigate to the main page, it shows you a handful of recommended items and searches based on your recent activity, right?

    So, here's my recent activity:

    And yeah, that's representative of what I've been looking at lately, on account of being mildly obsessed. 😅  I mean, there's also been some miniatures--partly to go in the miniature rooms I'm trying to get finished up, and partly to be accessories to go with the Nendoroid dolls of these two characters--and some doll clothes (also for the Nendoroid dolls), but mostly it's just been MDZS merch.  Because, you know, obsession.

    Here's what it showed me today on the front page as the recommended items at the top:

    As I said in the title of the post:  "WTF, Etsy?"

    Seriously, I have never in my life purchased a print of a disgustingly over-breasted woman, not from Etsy or anywhere else.  Nor have I ever purchased anything on Etsy that was sexualizing women at all!  On top of which, almost everything I've been browsing lately has been female-gaze merchandise of a female-gaze-oriented gay romance.

    So what POSSIBLE excuse can their algorithm give for putting that nasty cow-bikini print on there?  I mean, okay, it would admittedly be funny to see how Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji would react to such a sight (the latter would definitely be horrified, and might attack her on the assumption that she was a demon), but...ugh.

    So gross.  Why do some people want to see drawings of women where each breast is as large as (or larger than) her head, anyway?

    I will never understand it.

    (I could also ask that Etsy provide a "don't show me this item again" slider to go with that print that's showing on the thumbnail to search for "the untamed," as I don't think it's right to sexualize a character being horribly beaten, but at least that's actually related to what I've been looking at.  And, actually, there might be such an option on there somewhere and I've just never figured out how to use it, now that I think about it.)

    (Speaking of the recommended search thumbnails, I find it mildly hilarious that the thumbnail for the "Mo Dao Zu Shi pin" search shows a pair of figurines, and that the "mdzs" search's thumbnail shows a mug which appears to have an illustration for Heaven Official's Blessing on it rather than one for Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.  But as they're both by the same author (and goodness knows I'm definitely looking forward to the new volume of Heaven Official's Blessing that's due out on Tuesday with its steamy cover) that at least makes some degree of sense, unlike the bikini print.)