Netflix customer service says that search results are unaffected by sponsorships. Still, that doesn’t explain what happened when Melissa Leff tried to add some movies to her Netflix queue: nearly every search she tried brought up the Andy Richter star vehicle Aliens in the Attic.

First off was Dancer in the Dark. It seemed a little off to me that the next closest thing to what I was actually searching for was ‘Aliens in the Attic’—I mean, if you’re looking for something to make you sob and snuffle unattractively in front of your TV and require ‘in the’ in the title, perhaps ‘Flowers in the Attic’ would be a better choice? And surely there are closer hits to ‘Dancer’ than ‘Aliens’—’Dances with Wolves’, ‘Dirty Dancing’ or how about ‘The Dancer’? I chalked it up to what amounted to a search engine burp and kept moving…

But when Leff kept searching, there it was again and again, a shadowy sign of search results gone awry. Aliens in the Attic. Aliens in the Attic. Aliens in the Attic. Screwy algorithms? Angry robots? Divine intervention? You be the judge. Full story here.

Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies [I’m a DIRTY robot!]

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