Why this exists

This started because my roommate Ava was bored. Not short of things to watch, there is always more of that, but stuck scrolling past hundreds of options without a reason to pick any of them. What she actually said was that she had no way of knowing what our friends were into.

She was right, and it was a strange gap. The recommendations already existed. They were just scattered across group chats and conversations nobody wrote down, so somebody could rave about a film on a Tuesday and by the time you had a free evening it had scrolled away. I wanted one place where the handful of people whose taste I trust put what they thought, so that when any of us needs something to watch or read or play we can just go and look.

That is all this is. Films, television, games, books and music, reviewed by us, for us. No ratings from strangers, no algorithm deciding what surfaces, no audience beyond the people already here.

Everyone gets two invites

You are here because somebody asked you, and you can ask two people of your own. The limit is the point rather than a restriction I have not got round to lifting.

It keeps the group small enough that you recognise every name on the wall, and it means a place here is something somebody chose to give you instead of a form you filled in. Having only two to spend makes handing one over mean a bit more, for both of you.

The graph shows it growing

Every account traces back to whoever brought them in, so the whole group is really one tree of invitations. The who brought whom page draws that as a graph you can pull around: each person is a node, each invitation a line between two of them.

It is the part I like most. You can see the shape of the group rather than just a list of names, watch it grow as people accept, follow a chain back and see that somebody you have never met is here because of a friend of a friend. Open it after somebody new joins and the graph has already changed.

How it works

Search for something, give it a rating, say what you thought. It appears on the wall for everyone. Covers and titles come from OMDb, RAWG and Google Books, so you rarely have to type more than a name.

Every cover on the wall turns over. Drag one sideways, or just tap it, and the review is on the back.