Skip to content

Biting the hand that feeds IT

The Register ®

Odds and Sods:


Related Whitepapers

[Print][Mobile][Alerts]

Sodomites overrun Amazon.com

Raddick-al departure for Christian Coalition?

Published Saturday 7th December 2002 00:17 GMT

Update According to the blurb for Six Steps to Spiritual Revival , the Christian Coalition's Pat Robertson "reveals an amazing Scriptural pattern". But there's a pretty amazing pattern emerging amongst buyers of his book on Amazon.com.

Head over to this link and see if there's anything unusual. Or click to enlarge the screenshot, captured earlier today.

Amazing inventions


Yes, it appears that his readership includes a constituency that would make him blanche.
Scrolling down, you can see that a number of users have recommended The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Men in addition to, or as an alternative to Robertson's tome.

Robertson has fulminated against homosexuality many times, equating it to Satanism.

Personalization gone mad? asks net privacy specialist Richard M Smith - who we thank for bringing this to our attention. No, more likely a hack, he explains.

"Someone just got friends to visit the Web pages for the two books a bunch of times. Since the Robertson book hasn't sold very well, Amazon relies on page hits for recommendations and not book purchases."

However the online retailer only has itself to blame for the increasingly surreal " Customers who wear clothes also shop for:" recommendations… which in this case includes Clean Underwear (again!) and "Cheetah Print Slippers".

Amazon.com certainly does move in mysterious ways.®



Update: Remarkably, Amazon.com had removed the Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for... entry within ten minutes of the publication of this story. Since then the other recommendations have changed a number of times, as Amazon.com users make their way to inspect the page. Real-time vox pop?

Surely unrelated stories

Henry Raddick: man of letters - Amazon star [+ NPR interview]
Lloyd Webber hoaxer unmasked
"I am not Henry Raddick!" - HRH Prince of Wales [official denial]

Track this type of story as a custom Atom/RSS feed or by email.
Previous Article Next Article
whitepaper title

How IT Management Can "Green" the Data Center

This Gartner research provides managers with an outline of the trends affecting datacenters and offers strategies with which to address these changes..
whitepaper title

Gartner Paper: US Data Centers

U.S. enterprise data centers face considerable space and energy constraints over the next few years. Download this free independent report to read more..
Whitepapers

Top 20 storiesAll The Week’s HeadlinesArchiveSearch