Very Cute & Very Gay

If you ask Amazon for 90 inch blackout curtains it just vomits up a random pile of Chinese made curtains in, you know, not that size at all.

How do you learn the product name for the curtains that actually block light and aren’t made of poison when every review section is astroturfed and every recommendation is either glowing sponsored praise or some eccentric hobbyist with a corner use case decrying the lack of something you’ve never heard of and don’t know if it’s the jargon for something you should be paying attention to or some AI-generated repetitive gibberish mashing together phrases from the ad copy and the other recommendation lists and the other AI-generated repetitive gibberish?

Just Do More Research (: Caveat Emptor!! (: (:

fr there is no way I am aware of other than spending infinite time creating a brute force map of every blind alley and there is no way to publicize that map to save everyone else the trouble short of becoming The Curtain Review Guy as your full time job

(but, given the preponderance of low-credibility Headphone Review Guys and the fact that search engines invariably return useless slop regardless, this is probably also a waste of time even if you pull it off.)

here’s what pinterest looks like for me when i search blackout curtains. see those holes? they’re where ads were served to me and then blocked out. that’s how much of your pinterest feed is sponsored products. this particular search is probably not going to help me find a link to a good blackout curtain for sale, but it’s going to take me to craft sites and review sites, so maybe i’ll see if i can make myself some, or read some reviews so i know more of what to look for when i DO go to amazon. 

this was the sixth result on duckduck go, after ikea and lowes. it’s not even on the first page of google results, which would prefer me to go to target, wayfair, and overstock.com. amazon dominates the rankings on both searches, but it’s not as aggressively presented to you on duckduckgo, 

there’s also a duckduckgo result for a comparison article from a homegoods site. i honestly like thespruce.com, and use them frequently for their craft tutorials and recipes. if they’re fluff, they’re still fluff worth reading when you feel like fixing up your home.

https://blackoutcurtains.com/product/shop-blackout-curtains/

https://www.thespruce.com/best-blackout-curtains-4152964