Netflix originally launched a feature called Max in 2013, which was a virtual assistant designed to ask users a few questions and then recommend a movie so they would stop endlessly scrolling through the catalog.

A closer look

Netflix originally launched a feature called Max in 2013, which was a virtual assistant designed to ask users a few questions and then recommend a movie so they would stop endlessly scrolling through the catalog. The feature was widely criticized for being slightly annoying and was quietly discontinued, ensuring that couples worldwide would continue their nightly tradition of spending forty-five minutes choosing a movie before falling asleep in ten. A decade later, the streaming platform's interface is entirely dominated by aggressive, auto-playing trailers that blare at maximum volume the second you log in, making everyone deeply miss the polite virtual assistant. It is hilarious that they tried to genuinely solve the paradox of choice through gamification, but eventually just surrendered to letting algorithms shove terrible reality dating shows directly into our eyeballs