Netflix Has a Whopping 76,897 Ways to Describe Movies

So it's a lazy day and you just wanna Netflix a movie. But what kind of movie? A "visually striking Latin American comedy?" Maybe a "critically-acclaimed emotional underdog movie?" Suddenly, you're locked in option paralysis, and as The Atlantic figured out, you've got a ridiculous 76,897 unique genres to blame.

Over at The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal undertook the labor-intensive task of categorizing every single micro-genre Netflix has assembled in the quest for pitch-perfect movie suggestion. The result offers a strange insight into the streaming video psyche: as a block, we love stuff having to do with marriage, royalty, and parenthood, but we pretty much aren't interested in shows about September 11th. Madrigal's methodology for sussing out the dark corners of Netflix is fascinating, offering a first-time peek into the machinations behind the streaming movie giant (surprisingly, it's not all machine). Go read the full story here, and maybe branch out the next time you open your queue. [The Atlantic]