I Was Not Blown Away by Eli Tan’s ‘I Was Blown Away’ Review of Meta Muse

Eli Tan, writing for The New York Times, “I Gave My Life Over to Meta’s A.I. Agent and Was Blown Away” (gift link):

For one final task, I asked Wren for a good way to spend that $44.99 it had saved me. At this point, it knew my life pretty well. I thought it might suggest something altruistic, like donating the money to charity or buying flowers for my girlfriend, who was recovering from surgery.

Instead, it suggested something even better — buying bowls from Heath Ceramics, a local ceramics maker with a dedicated following, on Facebook Marketplace, one of my favorite pastimes.

Reading Tan’s “blown away” review (which words only appear in the headline, but it’s his byline under it) made me feel like I was on a hidden camera show. Like I’ve been told I’m about to be served some blow-you-away good coffee and what I’m tasting sure tastes like Folger’s fucking crystals. I’m not saying Muse isn’t capable of blow-you-away things, but I sure didn’t read any of them in Tan’s review. And then, at the end, it steers him toward buying something from ... Meta’s own Facebook Marketplace? And the reaction isn’t a hard eye roll?

I’m of the impression that Tan believes he’s supposed to be impressed by Muse so he wrote piece saying he was impressed even though he didn’t use it to do a single impressive thing. If Tan asked the new Siri AI for a recommendation on what to do and it suggested he go to an Apple Store and buy new AirPods, would he not think that a bit cynical? Or if Alexa suggested that he should buy more Kindle books?

Here’s Rusty Foster, over at Today in Tabs:

Tan and Johnson both seem like they have totally ordinary middle class white collar 2026 American lives, so I don’t mean anything personal against them when I say these reviews both make their authors sound like the biggest imaginable losers. You can’t call a guy to pick up a branch? Within two weeks? You can’t actually pick up a branch yourself with your own meat hands and throw it in the woods or something? What do you mean you had your robot shop for collectible ceramics? Is there any other part of collecting ceramics as a hobby besides shopping for them? Is your hobby now “having bowls?” Hi, I’m Eli Tan, writer for the New York Times. In my leisure time I enjoy owning dishes.

★ Friday, 25 September 2026