Dream Job Alert: Get Paid to Watch Netflix All Day
(Reuters)
Calling all couch cocooners! Netflix is looking to pay a real human adult cold, hard cash to become intimately familiar with the movies and shows in its catalog. You — yes, you — can get paid to watch Netflix. The position, known officially as a “tagger,” is based in the UK and Ireland. Per The Independent:
“It is Taggers’ responsibility to assess the genre, tone and personality of content to determine what viewers might want to watch next, helping the streaming service improve its ‘You might love Critically-Acclaimed-Emotional-Underdog-movies’ type suggestions.”
As Netflix’s promotional video for the position explains, Netflix taggers’ “analytical minds pick up on the most subtle details” to help assign categories to each item within the company’s vast collection of films, a process that The Atlantic’s Alexis C. Madrigal wrote about extensively earlier this year.
Though the video does not mention this, most taggers’ bloodstreams are 43 percent rosé.
Currently, there are only about 40 taggers in the world. Though they’re not as secretive as, say, the Michelin Guide’s mystery tasters, their identities are varied and fascinating. Many are based in Los Angeles, the unofficial home base of the movie industry. But others are sprinkled all over the globe. As The Independent notes, there’s a mom fluent in Hindi who has worked on a few crime shows; the former keyboard player in the band Stereolab; and a film director who lives in Mexico City.
According to Todd Yellin, vice president of product innovation at Netflix, each tagger must pass a test in order to prove she’s got what it takes for the job. Yellin told Canada.com that he likes to use Fantastic Mr. Fox as a test movie, as it defies a lot of the typical children’s and comedy genres.
And though he wouldn’t reveal how much taggers are paid, he says the freelance gig could earn someone a couple hundred dollars a week. Just think of all the Netflix wine you could buy with that.
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