A woman in leggings and Ugg boots poses for a selfie. A blond millennial strides along a porch in a leopard-print blouse. A leather recliner stretches across a snug living room. The images scroll by under one's thumb, a blur of shoppable scenes.
I'm getting an early look at the new Inspire section on Amazon's smartphone app. Set to launch this year, it's the company's response to TikTok: a personalized, machine-curated feed of user videos, all with “buy” links. Despite having little interest in the actual products on each page, I find myself lured in. “It's one of those things,” confesses the Amazon spokesperson who arranged the demo, “that can [take you] down a happy rabbit hole.”
These days, everyone's rabbit hole is a little different. Whereas in the earliest years of the internet, when each web page, icon, or piece of
