...and some of you are scratching your heads trying to figure out what that means or how they're connected. Well, if you're a Netflix member it makes perfect sense.

Sort of. And yes, this is continuing my train of thought on movies...

You see, this movie service called Netflix allows you to share your movie ratings with your friends. And theirs with you. So you see what's in their queue, and what movies they've rated recently, and a short review (if they input one) on certain movies. It's a pretty neat deal.

But something came up recently on another blog that watches the service that talked about a girl who was upset that Netflix's Friends feature said that she and a friend that she had for over 20 years were only 58% similar. She was clearly outraged by this, or at least as outraged as she wanted people who were reading her MySpace page to believe. Thinking that she's cracked, I decided to find out how some of my closest friends did.

I'm not surprised. One of them is 81% similar to me. Another is 80% similar. Someone I expected to be higher in the ratings was at 68%. Someone else was only at 51%, but I wasn't surprised about that when you look at what they consider a "5 star" movie and what I consider a "5 star" movie to be.

It also made me realize that there's a whole bunch of crap being made in this world and being passed off as entertainment. The Movie Muse commented on the 85 movies meme and made mention that perhaps we're reading the intent of the meme incorrectly. If you've seen 85 of the movies on *that* list then you have no life. Well, I'll admit there are some bad movies on that list, but there's also quite a few that are really good.

Yes, Darla, there are movies made before 1975 on that list. I think I knew that while I did the meme that they were few and far between but your comment made me go back and check for sure. Ah, but I digress...

This is about friends and movie ratings and the insanity of the original individual who thought that the movie ratings were betraying her. I'm sorry, but the last time I checked you and your best friend didn't have to agree on absolutely everything. I know people that hate 'The Princess Bride' and I don't think any less of them as a friend. I question their sanity and taste in movies, but they're still friends. I didn't realize that conformity and homogenization were required when you were looking for a friend.

But then maybe this person was reaching for a reason. She needed stability between her and her friend and maybe she figured that movie ratings would do it. Come on, everyone uses a 5 star scale differently. Well, 5 stars is pretty telling - you love it, love it, love it. But 1 star? That could mean a wealth of different things - it could mean you absolutely hated the movie, or that you just didn't like it compared to other movies that you would rate higher. It could be serving as a warning to others to never watch that movie, or maybe you just felt "eh" about it. Personally, I use it because there is no option of "Don't bother wasting the two hours of your life on this" instead. If there were, then I'd use it.

But suppose I rate something classic like... "The Wizard Of Oz" or "The Sound Of Music" or "Gone With The Wind" really low. One star, two stars. Would I really be less of a friend, or would I just have questionable taste in movies? I'd go with the latter rather than the former. I'd still be your friend. It would take a lot more than a carefully crafted algorithm that calculates likeness percentages to determine whether a long-time friend really is or isn't a friend...

... I just wish the cracked one on MySpace would figure that out too.