Scroll through any marketplace and you will find something that makes you wonder — who invented this? And who on earth buys it? The answer is more revealing than you think.

Sometimes you scroll through a shopping app and stumble on something and think — who on earth invented this, and who actually buys it?

If you have ever had that thought, it is worth going one layer deeper.

If nobody wanted a product, it would be off the shelves by now. The ones that stay — no matter how odd they look — have a specific group of people they serve with precision.

Take those folding drying racks. Unfold one and it takes over the entire living room; folded up it is still bulky. In a 150-square-foot city apartment, it is a disaster. But put it in a three-story suburban house with a big yard, and suddenly it is perfect — plenty of hanging space, and it tucks away neatly when you are done.

The product did not change. The person changed. The context changed. And the verdict flipped entirely.  🔄

Here is something most people do not realize:

When we judge a product, we are often using our own life to judge someone else’s need.

You think something is useless because your life has no room for it. But that does not mean it is actually useless — it just means you are not its user.

Through the observer lens, you start to see that most things are not simply good or bad. They were designed to solve a specific problem — and that problem might simply not be yours.

Which is why you see this phenomenon all the time:

The same product. One person buys it, uses it for a year, and keeps reordering. Another tries it once and calls it a ripoff. Neither is lying. They just live inside different lives.

This becomes especially obvious in the logic of recommendations.

When you ask someone “Is this good?”, the answer you get is that person’s experience in their context. Their answer is real. But their context might be nothing like yours.

So I have grown skeptical of pure praise and pure criticism.

What I care about now is: Under what circumstances did they use it? What kind of person are they? How much do their frequency, environment, and purpose overlap with mine?

High overlap means their experience is relevant to me. Low overlap means even their rave review is not my truth.

Someone might ask: does that mean everyone is on their own? Is there any point to recommendations at all?

There is. But the way we recommend has to change.

That is information. That is not an ad.  ✅