Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders • Hacker News Board

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#81

Post by jaredandrews » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

> The other day I was idly wondering what are the strangest combinations of items people buy at grocery stores. The kind of shopping cart that makes the cashier snicker and later tell his friends, "Dude, can you believe this guy came in and only bought condoms and apples?"

When you are a cashier, customers make comments like this all the time, preemptively defending themselves to you for their "eccentric" purchases. Truthfully, as a cashier you are on auto pilot and scanning things as quickly as possible and trying to not make mistakes. We are a store that sells these items and I do not find it surprising or strange that you are buying any of them. The fact that you can buy condoms and apples here is what makes this market "super". It's my job, I'm here to sell it to you. Paper or plastic?

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#82

Post by jayd16 » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #2

> Much better! Some of these even made me laugh out loud. Kale and an enema? Parsley and condoms? Adult diapers and baby food? > Small orders are less common but we still got some fun ones. Oreos and lube? Sounds like a good time! Funny to who ? Was this rated "for sure funny" by a LLM or what's going on? Why is it funny to buy Oreo and lube? I could understand "contradictions" or something like that (like buying wei…

Have you ever played Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples?

Its not so much that the juxtaposition on its own is hilarious. You have to build a scenario. It's fun to imagine funny scenarios.

Is the cart for a person who wants to treat themselves and these are their priorities? Is it a very specific mating ritual?

It's a writing prompt for your imagination. In reality almost all of these are surely very mundane repurchases but that's not the point.

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#83

Post by estetlinus » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

disillusioned wrote: post #3

Time for me to re-post my perennial "fun banana facts" post: Bananas are the #1 most-sold item at most grocery stores including, notably, Wal-Mart. Bananas also have the highest standard deviation in terms of predicting if a given (known) consumer will purchase bananas in a given store run. (At least as compared to other food products and consumables.) When predicting a consumer's shop, it's generally pretty easy to…

It is the only fruit that requires no washing before consuming. And also, it makes my tummy hard.

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#84

Post by furyofantares » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

Once you get to the LLM judging them, you've given up, and might as well just prompt the LLM to make up funny item co-occurrences.

Nothing wrong with giving up though, it's a hard problem for all the same reasons recommendation engines are.

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#85

Post by victor9000 » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #16

My conclusion: there's nothing funny about groceries, no matter how you order them. Counterexamples welcome. (Makes sense as I never felt the urge to laugh after looking in someone else's shopping basket. Anyway, perhaps that's why I'm not a data analyst.)

Baby Food, Adult Diapers

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#86

Post by jayd16 » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #16

My conclusion: there's nothing funny about groceries, no matter how you order them. Counterexamples welcome. (Makes sense as I never felt the urge to laugh after looking in someone else's shopping basket. Anyway, perhaps that's why I'm not a data analyst.)

Garlic and wooden gardening stakes.

Tampons and a self-help relationship type magazine, maybe?

Masks and toilet paper, so retro.

Wine, a spirit, and Wine and Spirits magazine.

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#87

Post by wildfireday2 » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 5:54 PM UTC

jaredandrews wrote: post #81

> The other day I was idly wondering what are the strangest combinations of items people buy at grocery stores. The kind of shopping cart that makes the cashier snicker and later tell his friends, "Dude, can you believe this guy came in and only bought condoms and apples?" When you are a cashier, customers make comments like this all the time, preemptively defending themselves to you for their "eccentric" purchases.…

Different experience at small town independent grocers that greet their regular customers by name and are summoned with a bell.

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#88

Post by jayd16 » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC

lionkor wrote: post #18

amelius wrote: post #16

My conclusion: there's nothing funny about groceries, no matter how you order them. Counterexamples welcome. (Makes sense as I never felt the urge to laugh after looking in someone else's shopping basket. Anyway, perhaps that's why I'm not a data analyst.)

Some combinations could be funny, like a pregnancy test and something really mundane but odd like a whole pineapple and a large bag of lettuce

Pregnancy test and a blue marker.

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#89

Post by lionkor » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

malfist wrote: post #64

lionkor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some combinations could be funny, like a pregnancy test and something really mundane but odd like a whole pineapple and a large bag of lettuce

Why would that be funny?

Not like funny like a joke is funny, but funny like having sun and rain at the same time is funny :)

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#90

Post by wildfireday2 » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 6:07 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #40

fragmede wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would an LLM make that mistake? It depends on why you went shopping. If you are blessed with a surplus of executive function, you can make a list and then get everything on that list when you go shopping. If you are not so privileged, you find yourself having to go to the store in pursuit of a specific mission. Get all the thinks to bake a cake for the birthday party that's to tonight, and don't get laundry deter…

Because after a couple of visits in the store, you realize that all the items you buy aren't necessarily related to each other, either by observing your own behavior or others. Not sure having a list or not is important, jumping to conclusions based on "oh, they bought oreo AND lube, they must be related" is exactly what you see LLMs do, and why you generally don't want to tell them unrelated stuff, because of how th…

It’s not that deep. The model was prompted to mine for humor in a mundane dataset and it dutifully did its best to find something chuckleworthy. It got OP to laugh out loud for some reason and take the time to post this. Presumably there weren’t system prompts to criticize and refuse to engage with juvenile attempts at banal humor. And why should there be?

After all it’s training data would include a vast corpus of body-function humor, fart jokes, and very old supermarket shopping list jokes that are being tested here.