Has this ever happened to you? Were you visiting a new city and you get on Facebook to ask your friends for restaurant recommendations in that city? Have you visited a new city and found a restaurant that seems to offer the kind of cuisine you always loved but you were put off by the fact that nobody is inside the restaurant eating? Do you feel stuck when making out what would normally be a very easy call to make? If so, the problem might be due to how you ask for and process the recommendations of others.
You take the very first recommendation from the very first friend to suggest something, and you go straight to that restaurant. Well, as you can well imagine, all bets are off as to the kind of experience you will get. Sure enough, it turns out that you have a lousy experience.
In this particular situation it’s very tempting to just blame the friend who made the bum recommendation. But it might turn out to be more complicated than you think. You see, when you ask for recommendation from friends or people you respect, you are essentially asking them for their opinion.
Now, this is a very problematic situation because everybody’s entitled to their opinion. While nobody’s entitled to their facts, everybody is entitled to their interpretation of facts.
Everybody has different tastes. We all come from different backgrounds, we have seen and experienced many different things—you can bet that all these differences can add up to quite a bit of difference when it comes to what we think are good, worthwhile or affordable.
So if you put all these things in context, it’s easy to see why taking somebody else’s recommendation may not lead to the kind of experience that you’re looking for. It might definitely not lead to satisfaction.
So how do you navigate this situation? Well, the first thing that you can do is to make sure that you are as specific as you can be when you ask for recommendations. For example, instead of saying to friends, “I’m visiting Dallas next week and I’d like your recommendation regarding where to eat,” try to be specific.
Don’t be surprised if a friend from one end of the country says you should eat at this Thai place, while another friend from the other side of the planet says you should check out this Tex-Mex restaurant. They’re both right. Why? You did not specify.
So do yourself a big favor and apply the filter of specificity. This crucial. Going in, you need to be as specific as possible.
If you, for example, love Thai food and hate Mexican food, then you need to spell out the kind of cuisine you’re looking for. Otherwise, don’t blame your friend if they turned out to recommend the wrong kind of cuisine.
The same applies to e-juice recommendations. You need to be as specific as possible when asking for recommendations. You also need to tie in or cross reference the suggestion with what you know about your friend.
For example, if a friend of yours really loves spicy food, do not be surprised if that person recommends an e-juice flavor that is very, very strong. After all, this person loves sharp, spicy food. What did you expect? Is it really all that big of a shock that this person is recommending a very hard, strong tasting, almost toxic e-juice flavor to you? It shouldn’t be a shock because it is consistent with that person’s taste preferences.
Now, of course, to be polite, you should not cross-examine people on Facebook. You shouldn’t say, “What do you normally eat? Don’t you think a lot of sambal is enough to deaden your taste buds?”
You don’t want to come off as judgmental, you don’t want to come off as harsh, but you should know enough about your friends and their food preferences as well as their vaping history to come up with the proper context for their recommendation. Otherwise, you just have to take whatever you can get. And believe me, nothing destroys friendships more than ignoring people’s recommendations or denigrating them at some level or another.
So be prepared to get a wide range of answers when you go on Facebook or Twitter and ask your friends for their e-juice recommendations. By going about this in a very systematic and methodical way, you increase the likelihood that you would get worthwhile recommendations.
While you may not stick to the e-juice flavors that you get at first, by asking the right questions and processing the answers properly, you will get to the right product sooner rather than later. That’s the best you could hope for.
The best solution, really, is to do things yourself. Recommendations can only go so far. Often times, they lead to all sorts of nasty and unexpected surprises. So do yourself a big favor and try to come up with your own systematic and methodical way of finding the right e-juice flavors from the right e-juice shop that make the most sense in your particular situation.
Now, it’s also important to budget a lot of time for this. The right answer is not going to just fall into your lap. You’re definitely not going to stumble into it.
It often happens that people find a flavor they really like, but as time goes by, they fall out of love with it. They become disenchanted, they start noticing certain small details, which grow and grow over time. Don’t be surprised to discover that the initial flavor that you thought was the best things since sliced bread no had some sort of funky aftertaste.
This happens quite a bit. Nobody is immune to this. It’s just really part of the process. It’s the nature of the beast. The key here is to be as open-minded as possible, and most importantly, to be both systematic and methodical in coming up with the very best solutions as you search.
Better yet, look at it as an adventure. Look at it as a fun puzzle you’re trying to solve. This way, you’re not operating out of desperation. Instead, you’re operating out of curiosity, and interesting things can pop up.
