About

A profile of your taste, built from what you actually loved.

Tastebuds is a diary for films, television, books, albums, and games, and a mirror. Log what you take in, rate it, write a line if you feel like it, and the site reads your taste back to you: what you lean toward, what you avoid, who shares it, and how likely you are to love the next thing.

How the reading works

Every title is read once on fourteen dimensions, from warm to bleak, contemplative to relentless, pulp to prestige. Your ratings put you somewhere on each: the things you loved sit on one side, the things you did not on the other, and the gap is your lean. Recent ratings count a little more than old ones, and what you write in reviews nudges the reading too. Twelve archetypes name the common shapes; yours is a reading for today, with a runner-up, and it moves as you rate.

Predictions come from the same numbers: your leans, the closest things you rated, your record in a genre, and the crowd. They are shown as probabilities because that is what they are, and the site keeps score of how often it was right on your Taste tab. The small judgments behind all this, which review says what, which archetype fits, which title defines a year, are made by TypeSafe's Jev model. It chooses and scores; it never writes a word you read.

How we argue here

Disagreement is the point; contempt is not. Argue with the opinion, never the person. Comments our moderation reads as hostile are held back, anything can be reported from where you see it, and blocking someone removes them from your view and you from theirs. Repeat offenders lose the account.

What it is not

Not an algorithmic feed, not a store, not a place that sells your attention. There are no ads and no trackers. Everything on your profile is there because you logged it, and you can take it with you or delete it in one click from Settings.

Data credits

Tastebuds is built on open and community-maintained catalogues, and owes them the credit:

Film and television data and images from The Movie Database (TMDB). This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
Book data and covers from Open Library, a project of the Internet Archive.
Album data from MusicBrainz and cover art from the Cover Art Archive.
Critics' scores (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, OpenCritic) as recorded on Wikidata, CC0. Tastebuds is not affiliated with those services.
Critics' reviews: headlines, opening lines and links, powered by the Guardian and data provided by The New York Times. Each review is read on the paper's own site.
Readers' ratings for books from Hardcover, its members' average and count only.
Game data and images from IGDB, a Twitch service.
Where-to-watch information from TMDB, provided by JustWatch.
Album descriptions and artist photographs from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, under their contributors' licences.
Buddicons are based on the Lorelei set by Lisa Wischofsky, released to the public domain (CC0) through DiceBear, with additional hair, eyes, noses, facial hair and headwear drawn for Tastebuds in the same style. Demo accounts are marked as such and are fictional.

Titles, artwork, and descriptions belong to their rights holders and are shown for identification and commentary.

Keep it running

Tastebuds has no ads and sells nothing about you. If it has earned a place in your week, you can chip in. It goes to hosting, the data sources, and the time to keep building. Supporters give a dollar a month for nothing but our thanks; Bestbuds get the Bestbud badge and the Bestbud pieces in the Buddicon creator. Use the email you signed up with, or put your @username in the message, so it lands on your account.

Who makes it

Tastebuds is made by Justin Chuan. Questions, corrections, and complaints go to help@curatorco.app. The Privacy Policy and Terms of Use say the rest.