Gary Chapman wrote about five love languages: words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, quality time, physical touch. The book sold 20 million copies. People still put their love language in their dating profiles.
But he missed one.
There's a sixth love language, and it's the one people practice most often without realizing it. It's the song you text someone at 1 AM with no explanation. The restaurant you insist they try. The book you press into their hands and say, "Just trust me."
It's the recommendation.
And it might be the most intimate thing we do online.
The Weight of "You'd Love This"
Think about what actually happens when you recommend something to someone. Not the algorithm recommending it — you. A specific person, choosing a specific thing, for a specific someone.
First, you have to know the thing well enough to love it. That means you've already given it time, attention, some piece of yourself. The movie changed how you think about something. The album carried you through a rough month. The taco place has a salsa verde that made you close your eyes.
Then — and this is the part people skip over — you have to know them. Not their demographics. Not their purchase history. Them. Their sense of humor. What they're going through. What lights them up, what they're ready for, what would land right now versus six months from now.
A great recommendation is the intersection of two inner lives. It says: I know this thing, and I know you, and I know you two should meet.
That's not an algorithm. That's love.
Small Gifts, Constantly
We have this cultural fixation on grand gestures. The surprise proposal. The handwritten letter. The boom box held overhead in the rain. Valentine's Day leans hard into this — the bigger the gesture, the bigger the love.
But the people who really know you? They don't need a holiday. They show it in the smallest moments, over and over:
"Wait — have you seen this?"
"This made me think of you."
"You NEED to try this place."
"I know you're going through it, so here — watch this. It'll help."
Each one is a tiny gift. Not wrapped, not expensive, not even always asked for. But each one carries the same message: I see you. I pay attention. I know what you'd love because I know who you are.
My friend Sarah does this thing where she'll text me a photo of a menu at some restaurant she's at and circle one item with the note: "This is so you." She's never wrong. Not because she has great taste in food — though she does — but because she has great taste in me. She knows my palate the way some people know their partner's ring size.
That's not trivial. That's a form of devotion.
The Algorithm Can't Do This
Let's be honest about what recommendation algorithms actually do. They track patterns. If you watched three horror movies, they suggest a fourth. If you bought running shoes, they show you socks. It's pattern-matching with a profit motive, and it's fine for surface-level discovery — but it will never replicate what a person who loves you can do.
Because the algorithm doesn't know you just went through a breakup and need something gentle. It doesn't know that you're the kind of person who would rather eat at a divey taqueria than a Michelin-starred restaurant. It doesn't know that you loved that book not for its plot but for one specific paragraph on page 47 that made you feel less alone.
The algorithm sees your behavior. The people who love you see your soul.
This is why a recommendation from someone you trust hits different than a "Because you watched..." carousel. One is a transaction. The other is a conversation. One says, "Users like you also liked..." The other says, "I know you."
There is no collaborative filtering model on earth that can replicate the feeling of a friend handing you a book and saying, "I haven't stopped thinking about this since I finished it, and I know you won't either."
Love Languages We Already Speak
Here's what's beautiful: most people already do this. Constantly. Without thinking of it as anything special.
You've made someone a playlist before. You've dragged a friend to a restaurant. You've said, "Okay, you have to listen to this episode," and then waited anxiously for them to text you back about it.
You've had the experience of recommending something that landed perfectly — and how that felt. That electric moment when someone comes back and says, "How did you know?" And you just did. You just knew.
That's intimacy. Real intimacy. Not the Instagram kind where you post a photo captioned "My Person." The quiet, ongoing kind where you're constantly building a map of someone — what moves them, what bores them, what they need right now, what they'll be ready for later.
Couples do it. Best friends do it. Parents do it for their kids. Even strangers do it sometimes, when they overhear you talking and lean over to say, "Sorry — couldn't help it — but if you liked that, you'd love this..."
We just don't have a name for it. Love language number six: I found something beautiful and I thought of you.
The Shelf as a Love Letter
This is part of why we built Stacks. Not all of it, but a real part.
Because right now, most recommendations happen in text threads that scroll away. In DMs that get buried. In conversations you forget by next week. Someone tells you about a show, and you say you'll watch it, and then it dissolves into the noise of everything else vying for your attention.
What if it didn't have to?
What if every time someone said "you'd love this," it had a place to land? A shelf where the things people who love you recommended could sit, waiting for you, curated not by an algorithm but by the humans in your life who actually know you?
That's what a shared stack is. It's not a list. It's a love letter in list form. "Here are the things I found in the world that made me think of you." When you browse someone's stack, you're not browsing products — you're browsing how someone sees you.
Today, of All Days
It's Valentine's Day. The world will be loud today about roses and reservations and the right way to say I love you.
But maybe the best version is the quietest one. The one that happens on a random Tuesday, when someone who knows you — really knows you — sends you a link with no context except: "Trust me."
And you do. Because that's what love is. Trusting someone else's taste in the things that matter to you.
So today, instead of (or, fine, in addition to) flowers: send someone a recommendation. A song. A show. A place. A book. The weird snack you found at the international grocery store. Whatever. Pick something you love, think of someone you love, and connect the two.
It doesn't need a card. It doesn't need wrapping paper. It just needs the six most romantic words in the English language:
"I found this and thought of you."
Happy Valentine's Day.