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Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
A history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine the shape of culture itself.
From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. The algorithm is present in the familiar neon signs and exposed brick of Internet cafes, be it in Nairobi or Portland, and the skeletal, modern furniture of Airbnbs in cities big and small. Over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed—informing the songs we listen to, the friends with whom we stay in touch—as we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to our insipid new normal.
This ever-tightening web woven by algorithms is called “Filterworld.” Kyle Chayka shows us how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless consumption, becoming a source of pervasive anxiety in the process. Users of technology have been forced to contend with data-driven equations that try to anticipate their desires—and often get them wrong. What results is a state of docility that allows tech companies to curtail human experiences—human lives—for profit. But to have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, while convenient, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question.
In Filterworld, Chayka traces this creeping, machine-guided curation as it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces. With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity—the qualities that make us human? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet?
To the last question, Filterworld argues yes—but to escape Filterworld, and even transcend it, we must first understand it.
From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. The algorithm is present in the familiar neon signs and exposed brick of Internet cafes, be it in Nairobi or Portland, and the skeletal, modern furniture of Airbnbs in cities big and small. Over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed—informing the songs we listen to, the friends with whom we stay in touch—as we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to our insipid new normal.
This ever-tightening web woven by algorithms is called “Filterworld.” Kyle Chayka shows us how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless consumption, becoming a source of pervasive anxiety in the process. Users of technology have been forced to contend with data-driven equations that try to anticipate their desires—and often get them wrong. What results is a state of docility that allows tech companies to curtail human experiences—human lives—for profit. But to have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, while convenient, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question.
In Filterworld, Chayka traces this creeping, machine-guided curation as it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces. With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity—the qualities that make us human? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet?
To the last question, Filterworld argues yes—but to escape Filterworld, and even transcend it, we must first understand it.
290 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 16, 2024
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February 19, 2024
"Filterworld... a black hole of normalcy.”
I often wonder why it is that algorithms almost never seem to fit me. It doesn't matter what the recommendation or ad is for, I have zero interest in 99% of what is shown to me.
It seems like they work very well for other people. Most people seem to love, or at the very least like, the movies and shows, music, etc that is recommended to them.
I'm left wondering if it's a case of me being either too picky or too eccentric for the algorithms, or if a lot of people just assume they will like/love something because they were told they would and so they end up thinking they liked/loved it.
After reading this book, I think the latter is true. As I learned, algorithms aren't really tailored to the consumer as we assume they are. They're tailored to the priorities of the corporation who owns them, and to the advertisers who are paying them.
It was interesting to read about a guy who set up a bunch of Netflix accounts with each of the "users" watching solely one type of movie or show (romance, comedy, etc). He found that a lot of the same recommendations were in all accounts.
Netflix simply changed the thumbnail to better reflect the user's "preferences''. For instance, all eight 'Fast and Furious' movies were recommended to every single account, though it's clearly not a romance, sports movie, or something a snooty obscure art-house-film-watcher would enjoy.
I found a lot of interesting things in this book, especially for the first half or 2/3 of the book. After that, the somewhat redundant material bored me (for instance, 6 times the generic "instagram coffee shop" was described as having subway tiles on the wall).
I agree with what the author consistently pointed out, that our algorithmically sorted lives are increasingly void of value. We are served more and more of the same - my Facebook feed, for instance. I looked at prescription lenses for Meta Quest 3 a few weeks ago and every other post on Facebook since then has something to do with Meta Quest.
I spend ever less time on Facebook because I see little of interest. You would think those algorithms would learn to stop showing the same shit over and over again as though I have dementia and forget everything in 30 seconds because it's obviously not holding my attention.
BBC, Reuter's, and NPR - the three news sources I use- show me basically the same article over and over and over again once I click on a certain story or topic. It's boring. It'd be like if I only read one genre of book and liked reading basically the same book over and over and over again. Some people seem to like that and that's ok, but I want variety.
"Art" is increasingly dumbed down and reduced to whatever generates more content and spreads the fastest. Many authors are selling books not because they can write well but because they write a lot. It's quantity over quality in filterworld.
"Filterworld culture is ultimately homogenous, marked by a pervasive sense of sameness even when its artifacts aren’t literally the same. It perpetuates itself to the point of boredom."
Living by and for the algorithm is causing more and more users to feel alienated and anxious. It's difficult to find anything but what the corporations want to feed us. "The sameness feels inescapable, alienating even as it is marketed as desirable."
In spite of the occasional redundancy, I thought this book was well-worth my time. I didn't agree with everything the author said but it was interesting nonetheless.
If you're interested in technology and/or how we're being manipulated by corporations, you might also enjoy reading this book.
I often wonder why it is that algorithms almost never seem to fit me. It doesn't matter what the recommendation or ad is for, I have zero interest in 99% of what is shown to me.
It seems like they work very well for other people. Most people seem to love, or at the very least like, the movies and shows, music, etc that is recommended to them.
I'm left wondering if it's a case of me being either too picky or too eccentric for the algorithms, or if a lot of people just assume they will like/love something because they were told they would and so they end up thinking they liked/loved it.
After reading this book, I think the latter is true. As I learned, algorithms aren't really tailored to the consumer as we assume they are. They're tailored to the priorities of the corporation who owns them, and to the advertisers who are paying them.
It was interesting to read about a guy who set up a bunch of Netflix accounts with each of the "users" watching solely one type of movie or show (romance, comedy, etc). He found that a lot of the same recommendations were in all accounts.
Netflix simply changed the thumbnail to better reflect the user's "preferences''. For instance, all eight 'Fast and Furious' movies were recommended to every single account, though it's clearly not a romance, sports movie, or something a snooty obscure art-house-film-watcher would enjoy.
I found a lot of interesting things in this book, especially for the first half or 2/3 of the book. After that, the somewhat redundant material bored me (for instance, 6 times the generic "instagram coffee shop" was described as having subway tiles on the wall).
I agree with what the author consistently pointed out, that our algorithmically sorted lives are increasingly void of value. We are served more and more of the same - my Facebook feed, for instance. I looked at prescription lenses for Meta Quest 3 a few weeks ago and every other post on Facebook since then has something to do with Meta Quest.
I spend ever less time on Facebook because I see little of interest. You would think those algorithms would learn to stop showing the same shit over and over again as though I have dementia and forget everything in 30 seconds because it's obviously not holding my attention.
BBC, Reuter's, and NPR - the three news sources I use- show me basically the same article over and over and over again once I click on a certain story or topic. It's boring. It'd be like if I only read one genre of book and liked reading basically the same book over and over and over again. Some people seem to like that and that's ok, but I want variety.
"Art" is increasingly dumbed down and reduced to whatever generates more content and spreads the fastest. Many authors are selling books not because they can write well but because they write a lot. It's quantity over quality in filterworld.
"Filterworld culture is ultimately homogenous, marked by a pervasive sense of sameness even when its artifacts aren’t literally the same. It perpetuates itself to the point of boredom."
Living by and for the algorithm is causing more and more users to feel alienated and anxious. It's difficult to find anything but what the corporations want to feed us. "The sameness feels inescapable, alienating even as it is marketed as desirable."
In spite of the occasional redundancy, I thought this book was well-worth my time. I didn't agree with everything the author said but it was interesting nonetheless.
If you're interested in technology and/or how we're being manipulated by corporations, you might also enjoy reading this book.
January 17, 2024
This is a perfect pick for a book club. It’s a sprawling look at the impacts of algorithmic supremacy, both through technology and society, that take the reader for an introspective journey into dissecting our tastes, emotions, and inescapable presence on the internet
January 28, 2024
"Algorithms dictate the websites we find in Google Search results; the stories we see on our Facebook feeds; the songs that Spotify plays in never-ending streams; the people we see as potential matches on dating apps; the movies recommended by the Netflix home page; the personalized feed of videos presented by TikTok; the order of posts on Twitter and Instagram; the folders our emails are automatically sorted into; and the ads that follow us around the Internet. Algorithmic recommendations shape the vast majority of our experiences in digital spaces by considering our previous actions and selecting the pieces of content that will most suit our patterns of behavior. They are supposed to interpret and then show us what we want to see..."
Filterworld was a somewhat decent look into the topic, but I felt that the intro was the high water mark of the book. I was excited to start this one and see where the author would take the writing. Although the subject matter is an interesting one, I did not particularly enjoy the meat and potatoes of this book. More below.
Author Kyle Chayka is a contributing writer for The New Yorker covering technology and culture on the Internet. His work has also appeared in the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, and Harper's, among other publications.
Kyle Chayka:
The author gets the writing here off on a good foot, with a very well-written intro that talks about the Mechanical Turk. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, I felt that this writing was the high point of the book. TBH; the rest of the book really dragged for me. It could be a subjective thing, as I am very particular about how engaging the books I read are. I felt that the book opened with a bang, and then meandered on somewhat monotonously for the rest of the duration.
He drops the quote at the start of this review in the intro, and it continues below:
In this quote, Chayka talks about the title of the book, and its thesis:
The all-knowing algorithm. If you have used any form of social media in the last ~5-8+ years, then the content you have been exposed to has been fed to you by an algorithm. The author drops this bit of writing:
Unfortunately, and further to what I mentioned above, I felt that the writing here got more tedious and long-winded as it went. There's a huge chunk of writing in here about how the author likes to go to hipster coffee cafes, and detailed descriptions of these cafes. I was becoming frustrated.
Also, for some reason, the book contains a bunch of irrelevant mindless leftist nonsense. There are derogatory mentions of "white men," "whiteness," and usage of other politically-charged leftist jargon like "marginalized groups."
I'm not quite sure WTF "whiteness" has to do with computer algorithms, or even why the author felt the need to include this type of crap in a book like this in the first place. Even more ironically, we have the author, who is a white man, complaining about white men. How fucking cringey and pathetic...
Sadly, this is a trend that seems to be increasing over time. You can rarely pick up a nonfiction book without reading about "smashing capitalism," the "patriarchy," "whiteness," or a litany of many other bits of tribal jargon that betray the author's ideological possession. Much like an evangelical Christian who never shuts up about Jesus, these people just can't help themselves. God, It's all so tiresome...
********************
I had high hopes for Filterworld. Unfortunately, it did not meet my expectations. I feel like the intro of the book provides ~90+% of its value.
The book was also way too long. The audio version I have clocks in just shy of 12 hours. At least 30% of the content here could have (or even should have) been edited out without any loss to the overall presentation.
I would not recommend it.
2 stars.
Filterworld was a somewhat decent look into the topic, but I felt that the intro was the high water mark of the book. I was excited to start this one and see where the author would take the writing. Although the subject matter is an interesting one, I did not particularly enjoy the meat and potatoes of this book. More below.
Author Kyle Chayka is a contributing writer for The New Yorker covering technology and culture on the Internet. His work has also appeared in the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, and Harper's, among other publications.
Kyle Chayka:
The author gets the writing here off on a good foot, with a very well-written intro that talks about the Mechanical Turk. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, I felt that this writing was the high point of the book. TBH; the rest of the book really dragged for me. It could be a subjective thing, as I am very particular about how engaging the books I read are. I felt that the book opened with a bang, and then meandered on somewhat monotonously for the rest of the duration.
He drops the quote at the start of this review in the intro, and it continues below:
"...Today, we are constantly contending with algorithms of all kinds, each one attempting to guess what we are thinking of, seeking, and desiring before we may even be aware of the answers. When I write an email, my Gmail app predicts which words and phrases I am trying to type and fills them in for me, as if reading my mind. Spotify stocks its screen with the musicians and albums it predicts that I am likely to listen to, which I often end up selecting simply out of habit. When I unlock my phone, photos from the past I may want to see—labeled “memories,” as if they existed in my subconscious—are preloaded, as are suggestions for apps I may want to open and friends I may want to text. Instagram offers a mood board of what its algorithm perceives as my interests: top-down photos of food, architecture snapshots, looping clips of prestige television shows. TikTok serves me an inexplicable avalanche of videos of people retiling their showers, and I inexplicably keep watching them, compelled in spite of myself. Surely there is more to my identity as a consumer of culture?"
In this quote, Chayka talks about the title of the book, and its thesis:
"Filterworld, the title of this book, is my word for the vast, interlocking, and yet diffuse network of algorithms that influence our lives today, which has had a particularly dramatic impact on culture and the ways it is distributed and consumed. Though Filterworld has also changed politics, education, and interpersonal relationships, among many other facets of society, my focus is on culture. Whether visual art, music, film, literature, or choreography, algorithmic recommendations and the feeds that they populate mediate our relationship to culture, guiding our attention toward the things that fit best within the structures of digital platforms. The automated recommendations are filters that both sift what gets attention from what is ignored and subtly warp the appearance of these things, like a photo filter on Instagram, exaggerating some qualities and downplaying others. The cultural successes of Filterworld are obvious. They include phenomena like the countrified TikTok dance that propelled Lil Nas X’s 2018 song “Old Town Road” to global fame; the cliché design trends that plague Instagram, like minimalist interiors and the monotonous sans serif logos that fashion brands have adopted in recent years; and the rage-triggering deluge of meaningless Twitter controversies."
The all-knowing algorithm. If you have used any form of social media in the last ~5-8+ years, then the content you have been exposed to has been fed to you by an algorithm. The author drops this bit of writing:
"...In place of the human gatekeepers and curators of culture, the editors and DJs, we now have a set of algorithmic gatekeepers. While this shift has lowered many cultural barriers to entry, since anyone can make their work public online, it has also resulted in a kind of tyranny of real-time data.
Attention becomes the only metric by which culture is judged, and what gets attention is dictated by equations developed by Silicon Valley engineers. The outcome of such algorithmic gatekeeping is the pervasive flattening that has been happening across culture. By flatness I mean homogenization but also a reduction into simplicity: the least ambiguous, least disruptive, and perhaps least meaningful pieces of culture are promoted the most. Flatness is the lowest common denominator, an averageness that has never been the marker of humanity’s proudest cultural creations."
Unfortunately, and further to what I mentioned above, I felt that the writing here got more tedious and long-winded as it went. There's a huge chunk of writing in here about how the author likes to go to hipster coffee cafes, and detailed descriptions of these cafes. I was becoming frustrated.
Also, for some reason, the book contains a bunch of irrelevant mindless leftist nonsense. There are derogatory mentions of "white men," "whiteness," and usage of other politically-charged leftist jargon like "marginalized groups."
I'm not quite sure WTF "whiteness" has to do with computer algorithms, or even why the author felt the need to include this type of crap in a book like this in the first place. Even more ironically, we have the author, who is a white man, complaining about white men. How fucking cringey and pathetic...
Sadly, this is a trend that seems to be increasing over time. You can rarely pick up a nonfiction book without reading about "smashing capitalism," the "patriarchy," "whiteness," or a litany of many other bits of tribal jargon that betray the author's ideological possession. Much like an evangelical Christian who never shuts up about Jesus, these people just can't help themselves. God, It's all so tiresome...
********************
I had high hopes for Filterworld. Unfortunately, it did not meet my expectations. I feel like the intro of the book provides ~90+% of its value.
The book was also way too long. The audio version I have clocks in just shy of 12 hours. At least 30% of the content here could have (or even should have) been edited out without any loss to the overall presentation.
I would not recommend it.
2 stars.
Read
January 31, 2024Brilliantly constructed and argued. This is a fascinating and terrifying dissection of the vapidity of culture ruled by algorithms. I loved how this centered on the necessary humanness of personal choice and taste, opposing passive consumption. A book that I’ve been looking for without exactly realizing it! If you’re reading this, you should read Filterworld.
May 22, 2024
A must-read for anyone online consuming virtual content of any kind and all content creators with that very specific, tumultuous relationship with the dreaded algorithm.
This has completely altered how I view the internet and social media as well as forced me to think critically about the reasons behind why I engage with it all in the way that I do.
Deeply informative with a range of very interesting examples of the positives and negatives of a smart and persistent algorithm.
CW: discussions of depression, self harm, and suicide
This has completely altered how I view the internet and social media as well as forced me to think critically about the reasons behind why I engage with it all in the way that I do.
Deeply informative with a range of very interesting examples of the positives and negatives of a smart and persistent algorithm.
CW: discussions of depression, self harm, and suicide
March 11, 2024
The first few chapters are good, describing how recommendation algorithms have affected the production and consumption of media and physical spaces. A reoccurring example (very reoccurring) is the "hipster coffee shop" that's become common over the last decade. It has large windows, white or tile walls and minimalist decoration. Maybe the menu is written in chalk on a blackboard. Chayka describes this aesthetic being the result of an algorithm. The aesthetic was popular on Instagram, so customers heard about it. That engagement boosted prominence in apps such as Yelp and Google, which brought in more customers. Anyone that opened a café adopted that look or was shut out of that feedback loop. Engagement algorithms forced coffee shops in Seoul, Seattle and Sydney to converge, all serving the same flat white. Chayka describes similar trends in music, books, furniture, interior design and everything else that makes up a culture. The book is at it's best when he describes how these algorithms work and the history of how they were developed. I also enjoyed some tidbits about what it's like to be a producer in a market dominated by an algorithm. He describes trying to boost engagement for his own articles on Facebook by referencing non-existent weddings in order to get the timeline boost that comes with a major life event. The "algo" is a black box, so producers aren't sure what works. AirBnb hosts have a cargo cult of rituals that they believe might boost their rating, such as only having a certain number of photos, logging in to the app a specific number of times or using certain descriptors.
After this explanation of how algorithms work, Chakra veers off into vague moralizing. One section details how Iceland's tourism industry grew suddenly and exponentially in the 2010s. He describes being at Gullfoss Falls as part of a tour package. He's awestruck by the beauty and judgmental of the other tourists taking photos. In his words:
"But much of my group was looking at the view through their phone cameras. The vista that they were capturing, down to the angle, was the same one that appears over and over again on the falls' Instagram page. They were further replicating the image, ensuring its dominance as a generic symbol of Iceland."
Or they were taking souvenir photos of a trip? Like a few weeks later they'll have someone ask about their Iceland trip, and they want to be able to pull out their phone and flip through their pictures as they describe seeing breathtaking beauty. Somehow he assumes that they're not experiencing it as authentically as him.
This snootiness typifies the rest of the book. He spends a lot of time talking about high school and how his own experience of downloading music on Kazaa is so much deeper than today's kids finding music on TikTok. He points to Emily In Paris as featureless slop that can only be enjoyed by someone with an app-rotted brain, vegetating in front of a screen. But pre-filterworld, you just spend hours watching Joe Millionaire or whatever. For writing an entire book about taste, he seems oblivious to it can differ. Notably he criticizes Billie Eilish as someone who would not be recognized by discerning judges rather than algorithms But a few months after publication she won an Oscar? It often seems like he's just nostalgic for his own youth and is just frustrated that things aren't the same now.
While I disliked most of the book, it does point to something. One of the issues with algorithms is that it forces us to make things legible and quantifiable. In this review, I had to decide exactly how many stars to give the book. While I have complex thoughts, ultimately they're all boiled down to a number between 1 and 5. A number can be fed into goodreads' algorithm easily, while my frustration with the author's arrogance, amusement at bizarre incentives in the modern world and sympathy for his nostalgia can't. Living in "Filterworld" means only having that number and not feeling what it represents.
After this explanation of how algorithms work, Chakra veers off into vague moralizing. One section details how Iceland's tourism industry grew suddenly and exponentially in the 2010s. He describes being at Gullfoss Falls as part of a tour package. He's awestruck by the beauty and judgmental of the other tourists taking photos. In his words:
"But much of my group was looking at the view through their phone cameras. The vista that they were capturing, down to the angle, was the same one that appears over and over again on the falls' Instagram page. They were further replicating the image, ensuring its dominance as a generic symbol of Iceland."
Or they were taking souvenir photos of a trip? Like a few weeks later they'll have someone ask about their Iceland trip, and they want to be able to pull out their phone and flip through their pictures as they describe seeing breathtaking beauty. Somehow he assumes that they're not experiencing it as authentically as him.
This snootiness typifies the rest of the book. He spends a lot of time talking about high school and how his own experience of downloading music on Kazaa is so much deeper than today's kids finding music on TikTok. He points to Emily In Paris as featureless slop that can only be enjoyed by someone with an app-rotted brain, vegetating in front of a screen. But pre-filterworld, you just spend hours watching Joe Millionaire or whatever. For writing an entire book about taste, he seems oblivious to it can differ. Notably he criticizes Billie Eilish as someone who would not be recognized by discerning judges rather than algorithms But a few months after publication she won an Oscar? It often seems like he's just nostalgic for his own youth and is just frustrated that things aren't the same now.
While I disliked most of the book, it does point to something. One of the issues with algorithms is that it forces us to make things legible and quantifiable. In this review, I had to decide exactly how many stars to give the book. While I have complex thoughts, ultimately they're all boiled down to a number between 1 and 5. A number can be fed into goodreads' algorithm easily, while my frustration with the author's arrogance, amusement at bizarre incentives in the modern world and sympathy for his nostalgia can't. Living in "Filterworld" means only having that number and not feeling what it represents.
February 21, 2024
I agree with other reviewers who mentioned that this book feels like multiple contradictory books in one. I think that it's tempting to agree that culture is becoming something more homogenous when drawn into the Stanley cup craze on TikTok, but the author's arguments for homogeneity are underdeveloped and confusing at times. He dwells heavily on the "coffeeshop aesthetic" that many of us associate with hipster coffeeshops and questions how coffeeshops scattered all over have the same look and feel. While I think it seems like an interesting jumping off point on the surface, the answer is probably far stupider-trends and marketing! Trends are nothing new, and they existed long before algorithms were 'telling' us what to like or do. I think the coffeeshop argument is less about algorithms leading to coffeeshops looking the same and more about stacking layers of many things (style, trends, paid marketing, etc) leading to a pervasive feeling of same-ness. The coffeeshop argument also kind of falls apart later in the book when the author talks about how much better indie bookshops are than Amazon. Aren't many of them plagued by the same homogeneity as coffeeshops? I think this book would have been far better as three different articles (or perhaps two different articles and a third opinion piece questioning if we are all becoming more boring and bemoaning how Spotify designs their app). I think the author is coming from a vulnerable place of anxiety and fear about what algorithms are doing to culture, but I really found myself internally screaming 'touch grass!' during sections like the Spotify redesign passage about 25% of the way through.
May 10, 2024
Okay, I’ll talk about the content first before I get to my real gripe with this book. Basically: algorithmic recommendations drive the platforms that control so much of our social and economic lives. So anyone who personally wants or professionally needs to gain an audience on those platforms is heavily incentivized to tailor their content (be it a photo on Instagram or an apartment on Airbnb) to match what the algorithm prioritizes. They all prize “engagement,” and what gets engagement is generically pleasing content that doesn’t challenge the viewer or require additional context, stuff we can glide over and take on board comfortably. So we end up with a mainstream culture where all the sharp edges are rounded off – by what the algorithm promotes, and by the creators trying to succeed in that environment.
That message gets repeated over and over, and there’s not much that a mildly interested layperson wouldn’t have heard before. Basically, the book doesn’t pass what I’m calling the McLuhan Test: if you’re going long about the internet’s effects on culture, you should have something new and perceptive to contribute beyond what Marshall McLuhan already said 60 years ago. This should’ve been an article, not a book.
But the content isn’t what makes this a 1-star read. The real fatal flaw is this: if you’re going to insert yourself into your nonfiction work this often, you have to be SO much less annoying than this guy. I just wanted to learn about the impact of algorithms on culture, and instead I’m reading all about the tedious, utterly predictable elite lifestyle of this latte-art-photographing, Lisbon-Airbnb-renting, grew-up-in-suburban-Connecticut-and-moved-to-Brooklyn, terminally-online dude. What he lacks in insight he makes up for in overconfidence, which is the hallmark of a lot of successful people, I guess, but doesn’t make for a good reading experience. When he gets out of the way, it’s a decent read, but he never gets out of the way for long.
He’s irritating throughout, but the final straw was the last chapter, where Chayka does an “algorithm cleanse” (he doesn’t use social media for 3 months) and writes about it like he’s Sydney Carton going to the guillotine. Then before you have time to recover, he decides to talk about human connoisseurship by describing in excruciating detail the animes he liked in high school.
Okay, one more: in the acknowledgments he thanks his friends for “a very timely trip to Provence.” Insufferable!
The constant irritation made it a lot harder to excuse the book’s shortcomings. Along with the lack of new ideas, it felt like Substack-level editing; no blatant spelling errors or anything, but a lot of the phrasing needed more work. And there’s just so much fluff. He’s constantly referring to artwork he’s seen or experiences he’s had, but it always feels superficial, an effort to burnish his own intellectual credentials or fill pages rather than to shed real insight.
The most cathartic moment in the book comes when he gets caught taking a photo of his cappuccino in a fancy cafe in Kyoto: “‘People come here just for the Instagram,’ the barista told me in English, a slightly dry tone creeping in to his voice.” He feels embarrassed for a sentence or two – a victory for the reader – but then he excuses himself: “But with its unobtrusively minimalist interior and soft daylight, the café seemed to ask for it.” Life’s too short to read a cultural critique by someone with such limited capacity for self-reflection.
That message gets repeated over and over, and there’s not much that a mildly interested layperson wouldn’t have heard before. Basically, the book doesn’t pass what I’m calling the McLuhan Test: if you’re going long about the internet’s effects on culture, you should have something new and perceptive to contribute beyond what Marshall McLuhan already said 60 years ago. This should’ve been an article, not a book.
But the content isn’t what makes this a 1-star read. The real fatal flaw is this: if you’re going to insert yourself into your nonfiction work this often, you have to be SO much less annoying than this guy. I just wanted to learn about the impact of algorithms on culture, and instead I’m reading all about the tedious, utterly predictable elite lifestyle of this latte-art-photographing, Lisbon-Airbnb-renting, grew-up-in-suburban-Connecticut-and-moved-to-Brooklyn, terminally-online dude. What he lacks in insight he makes up for in overconfidence, which is the hallmark of a lot of successful people, I guess, but doesn’t make for a good reading experience. When he gets out of the way, it’s a decent read, but he never gets out of the way for long.
He’s irritating throughout, but the final straw was the last chapter, where Chayka does an “algorithm cleanse” (he doesn’t use social media for 3 months) and writes about it like he’s Sydney Carton going to the guillotine. Then before you have time to recover, he decides to talk about human connoisseurship by describing in excruciating detail the animes he liked in high school.
Okay, one more: in the acknowledgments he thanks his friends for “a very timely trip to Provence.” Insufferable!
The constant irritation made it a lot harder to excuse the book’s shortcomings. Along with the lack of new ideas, it felt like Substack-level editing; no blatant spelling errors or anything, but a lot of the phrasing needed more work. And there’s just so much fluff. He’s constantly referring to artwork he’s seen or experiences he’s had, but it always feels superficial, an effort to burnish his own intellectual credentials or fill pages rather than to shed real insight.
The most cathartic moment in the book comes when he gets caught taking a photo of his cappuccino in a fancy cafe in Kyoto: “‘People come here just for the Instagram,’ the barista told me in English, a slightly dry tone creeping in to his voice.” He feels embarrassed for a sentence or two – a victory for the reader – but then he excuses himself: “But with its unobtrusively minimalist interior and soft daylight, the café seemed to ask for it.” Life’s too short to read a cultural critique by someone with such limited capacity for self-reflection.
February 21, 2024
long-winded and underwhelming. felt like a lot of low-hanging-fruit critiques that didn’t add much of an interesting perspective on the topic.
Want to read
January 18, 2024This sounds very relevant to my new project, in which we are trying to curate the internet.
May 29, 2024
While I agree with the concept, this book didn’t need nearly 300 pages to meander somewhere roughly within proximity of a point. There were a few interesting facts and ideas scattered throughout, otherwise it felt like listening to a self-righteous hipster ramble on, lamenting the influence of the internet on the modern world. Most of the book was sprawling personal anecdotes or nostalgia for the simplicity of childhood, neither of which were very compelling. I only pushed myself to finish this read out of sheer stubbornness.
January 20, 2024
Although I knew a lot about how algorithms shape what content we consume before reading, this book articulated a lot of the problems I'd been having with online content. It crystallized the reasons why I intensely dislike short-form video feeds, for example. It also explained for me why, say, all the gaming YouTubers play the same games, or all the BookTubers talk about the same books. The idea that we can resist A.I.-generated algorithms or change how the Internet works is rather utopian, in my opinion, but this book made me appreciate and understand things I'd done subconsciously before--like how I limit my social media use and avoid most apps. The approach was well-written and researched, providing some fascinating historical tidbits about the genesis of the way things are now. I found myself thinking a lot after reading, which is what you want after a good nonfiction read. I listened to the audiobook, which was also well narrated. Recommend, if you're at all interested in how social media & technology companies are warping our perception of reality.
April 29, 2024
3.5 rounded down. i liked it, but it was more focused on anecdotal evidence and the subjective experiences of a few select interview subjects than i’d anticipated — this isn’t necessarily bad, but i was hoping for a more rigorous scientific study than an extended think-piece. i think zuboff’s the age of surveillance capitalism or even wark’s capitalism is dead, is this something worse? handle the topic better from a technological and political standpoint, but this is a nice add-on after you’ve learned the more important fundamentals about the political and economic forces that drive “Filterworld.”
January 23, 2024
ironically the act of writing & rating this book here is both equally for and against the spirit of the book, but it's such a banger I can't help but feel compelled to recommend it to all the pals - especially if you're a regular user of IG/Twitter/Youtube/TikTok
i've been off the worst of these platforms for several months now and it's vindicating to have someone articulate so thoughtfully many of the feelings i've been noticing (mainly in myself) as my brain adjusts to life without addictive algorithms
i've been off the worst of these platforms for several months now and it's vindicating to have someone articulate so thoughtfully many of the feelings i've been noticing (mainly in myself) as my brain adjusts to life without addictive algorithms
March 14, 2024
It's all fun and games until a book attacks what you love: lo-fi soundscapes (I know!), coffeeshop aesthetics, and even goodreads ratings.
Filterworld reads like a thesis, but a very good one that I enjoyed reading cover to cover. The author is only a bit older than me and our memories of the internet, and how it evolved, are similar. I found the outlining of a cohesive history, from Geocities to live journal to chatrooms to tumblr to Facebook to tiktok, engrossing and familiar.
What this book seeks to understand is recommendation algorithms. Now, I'm suspicious of a lot Big Algo, but I've always made an exception for things like the Spotify algorithm, which still does not seem nearly as harmful to me as some others out there. But the author argues that algorithmic recommendations flatten our culture, steering us towards conflating popular with good, and turning all interests ephemeral and dictated by the whims of the Algo.
And he has a point. There's some culture-specific examples that he dissects, and argues in favor of analogue media, hand picked curation (human DJs, not AI ones), and chronological timelines (I miss those).
It feels ironic to give a star value to a book that argues against rating and ranking media, but I'm in too deep. Here's 4.25 stars on SG, rounded down to 4 on GR.
Filterworld reads like a thesis, but a very good one that I enjoyed reading cover to cover. The author is only a bit older than me and our memories of the internet, and how it evolved, are similar. I found the outlining of a cohesive history, from Geocities to live journal to chatrooms to tumblr to Facebook to tiktok, engrossing and familiar.
What this book seeks to understand is recommendation algorithms. Now, I'm suspicious of a lot Big Algo, but I've always made an exception for things like the Spotify algorithm, which still does not seem nearly as harmful to me as some others out there. But the author argues that algorithmic recommendations flatten our culture, steering us towards conflating popular with good, and turning all interests ephemeral and dictated by the whims of the Algo.
And he has a point. There's some culture-specific examples that he dissects, and argues in favor of analogue media, hand picked curation (human DJs, not AI ones), and chronological timelines (I miss those).
It feels ironic to give a star value to a book that argues against rating and ranking media, but I'm in too deep. Here's 4.25 stars on SG, rounded down to 4 on GR.
July 16, 2024
I found my interest in the book started out really strong, then about halfway through it really started to drag and eventually made it hard to finish. I’m not sure it would have helped if the book’s ideas were organized differently, but I found a lot of the same ideas repeating over and over. I also appreciated the author’s anecdotes and interviews, but wish there was some data to back up this stuff. Also kind of ironic I’ve seen the author’s popularity rise recently through his articles shared on - you guessed it - apps with algorithms.
With all this said, this book gave me the needed push to delete Instagram after contemplating it for a while, and validates my feeling of emptiness in a doom scroll. I really liked the authors ideas about how the internet used to be a place to develop niche interests, and now it’s dominated by major companies devoid of any creativity, making the online world pretty bland and algorithms monotonous. So maybe the writing was more effective than I thought, or was it just telling me what I wanted or felt I needed to hear?
With all this said, this book gave me the needed push to delete Instagram after contemplating it for a while, and validates my feeling of emptiness in a doom scroll. I really liked the authors ideas about how the internet used to be a place to develop niche interests, and now it’s dominated by major companies devoid of any creativity, making the online world pretty bland and algorithms monotonous. So maybe the writing was more effective than I thought, or was it just telling me what I wanted or felt I needed to hear?
February 20, 2024
*3.5
Filterworld is an interesting look at algorithms and how they affect our online experience. I was hoping for more of a deeper dive into the political/philosophical ramifications and was a bit more disappointed on that end.
Filterworld is an interesting look at algorithms and how they affect our online experience. I was hoping for more of a deeper dive into the political/philosophical ramifications and was a bit more disappointed on that end.
July 9, 2024
Un ensayo escrito desde la infiltración forzada en lo que es Mundofiltro: RRSS y plataformas de difusión de cultura.
El capítulo 2 sobre cómo crear nuestro propio gusto y el último sobre la curaduría de nuestros intereses son las partes que más me han gustado y siento que cambiaré de aquí adelante.
Es de especial interés las entrevistas que hay a lo largo de todo el texto (A curadores de arte, influencers, publicistas...) y la opinión personal del autor que le da potencia a la teoría de que todo el mundo participa o interviene quiera o no.
Sin embargo, lo que más me ha gustado es que la conclusión mantiene positividad y espíritu de lucha contra el algoritmo y las grandes tecnológicas que hay detrás (aunque hay cierto pesimismo y nostalgia a lo largo de algunos capítulos más personales).
Queda totalmente explicado el aplanamiento de la cultura y, cualquiera que viva de ella, y lleve un tiempo en internet se habrá dado cuenta (en mi caso sobre todo en el tema de la escritura).
En esta economía de la atención, una postura radical es dar un paso atrás y pensar si las cosas nos gustan de verdad o es una trampa de publicistas.
A pesar de no ser un ensayo que se apoye fortísimo en datos porque los algoritmos son secretos corporativos, hay muchos elementos de ellos que desentrañamos por los cambios que han causado y se han ido investigando.
A favor de más humanos recomendadores y de ser responsables de nuestro algoritmo y, finalmente, el de todos.
El capítulo 2 sobre cómo crear nuestro propio gusto y el último sobre la curaduría de nuestros intereses son las partes que más me han gustado y siento que cambiaré de aquí adelante.
Es de especial interés las entrevistas que hay a lo largo de todo el texto (A curadores de arte, influencers, publicistas...) y la opinión personal del autor que le da potencia a la teoría de que todo el mundo participa o interviene quiera o no.
Sin embargo, lo que más me ha gustado es que la conclusión mantiene positividad y espíritu de lucha contra el algoritmo y las grandes tecnológicas que hay detrás (aunque hay cierto pesimismo y nostalgia a lo largo de algunos capítulos más personales).
Queda totalmente explicado el aplanamiento de la cultura y, cualquiera que viva de ella, y lleve un tiempo en internet se habrá dado cuenta (en mi caso sobre todo en el tema de la escritura).
En esta economía de la atención, una postura radical es dar un paso atrás y pensar si las cosas nos gustan de verdad o es una trampa de publicistas.
A pesar de no ser un ensayo que se apoye fortísimo en datos porque los algoritmos son secretos corporativos, hay muchos elementos de ellos que desentrañamos por los cambios que han causado y se han ido investigando.
A favor de más humanos recomendadores y de ser responsables de nuestro algoritmo y, finalmente, el de todos.
September 3, 2024
In Filterworld, technology writer Kyle Chayka broadly explores how society has changed from the early days of the mainstream internet in the 1990s to the current algorithmic-driven, filtered-flattened (his juxtaposition) era of the mid-2020s. I resonated strongly with many points in this book -- I think largely because Chayka and I are around the same age and had many of the same cultural touchstones around media and the internet -- i.e., first getting access to Facebook in the mid-2000s when Facebook was only available for college students, becoming emerging adults exercising agency and being valued for contributions on the internet before finding that validation offline, and having to work hard to explore niche interests online (i.e., crafty, persistent use of P2P file-sharing to cope with achingly slow internet speeds, creative ways to break language barriers, etc.) vs. today's binge-enabling, lightning-fast, and pre-curated but probably less creative and eclectic hobby collections scrollable on Instagram and similar apps available not just on computer screens but in our pockets nearly everywhere we go.
My statistics:
Book 199 for 2024
Book 1802 cumulatively
My statistics:
Book 199 for 2024
Book 1802 cumulatively
February 1, 2024
4.5 stars. A deep, critical examination into how algorithms have influenced culture, in a way that feels very, very real. Will have you rethinking how you interact with the internet world and how it interacts with you.
September 15, 2024
last year i became so sick to the teeth of algorithms prechewing my food for me that i bought an old ipod, the same one i had in high school. part of why i like goodreads is its absolutely dogshit algorithm for recommendations (you liked lolita? have you read the russian edition of prisoner of azkaban? i think you'd love it), forcing users to find other readers whose opinions they can respect.
so this book was preaching to the choir in a way. its philosophical rather than particularly informative, so i think it would be more eye opening to someone who hadn't thought much about the subject before, or those who praise the almighty algorithm and are looking to hear out the other side.
still, a solid, interesting, even-tempered read.
so this book was preaching to the choir in a way. its philosophical rather than particularly informative, so i think it would be more eye opening to someone who hadn't thought much about the subject before, or those who praise the almighty algorithm and are looking to hear out the other side.
still, a solid, interesting, even-tempered read.
February 2, 2024
A right place, right time kind of book for me - also this is the longest book review I’ve ever written but I think it’s worth a least a skim :,)
I’d been feeling jaded about the internet and how much time I spent on it. This helped me understand why the algorithm was making me feel this way.
Nothing on these platforms are personal - they will corner you into specific interest categories which prevent users from identifying their own individual tastes. The algorithm will do this for you and it will do it with the shortest and most attention grabbing content. This prioritizes content that doesn’t require complex thinking or allow users the time to sit with the subject. It also propels the homogeneity of culture as creators (myself included) conform to the algorithm in order to make sure their posts perform well.
I found myself noticing other places the algorithm controlled my life. The spotify algorithm usually generated the music I listened to with their auto-playlists and radios. The netflix suggestions that always suggested me romcoms and reality tv. We’ve lost the ability to determine our own interests and connect with art outside of a recommendation system.
This is an issue because these algorithms are not completely unbiased. These platforms run by large tech companies which prioritize the content most likely to get you to stay on their app. Culture is being flattened by capitalism. Not often can we partake in culture/art without a mediating third-party app to dictate how we do so.
What I appreciated most about this book is that it made me realize how immersed I was in algorithm culture. I’ve been able to take a step back and truly seek content that is driven by my interests not a computer. This book does a good job of not being a complete debby downer about the algorithm, but emphasize the importance of responsible personal curation of your internet habits. The hope is that more people at least become more aware of the way algorithms rule our lives so we can make conscious decisions of where we spend our time.
Things I didn’t like so much about this book:
It was a slow start, felt more like a textbook
Went on a bit long, and I felt like points were repeated multiple times
The author is an op-ed journalist and at times this book felt more like a long-form article than a novel with a lot of anecdotal asides
I’d been feeling jaded about the internet and how much time I spent on it. This helped me understand why the algorithm was making me feel this way.
Nothing on these platforms are personal - they will corner you into specific interest categories which prevent users from identifying their own individual tastes. The algorithm will do this for you and it will do it with the shortest and most attention grabbing content. This prioritizes content that doesn’t require complex thinking or allow users the time to sit with the subject. It also propels the homogeneity of culture as creators (myself included) conform to the algorithm in order to make sure their posts perform well.
I found myself noticing other places the algorithm controlled my life. The spotify algorithm usually generated the music I listened to with their auto-playlists and radios. The netflix suggestions that always suggested me romcoms and reality tv. We’ve lost the ability to determine our own interests and connect with art outside of a recommendation system.
This is an issue because these algorithms are not completely unbiased. These platforms run by large tech companies which prioritize the content most likely to get you to stay on their app. Culture is being flattened by capitalism. Not often can we partake in culture/art without a mediating third-party app to dictate how we do so.
What I appreciated most about this book is that it made me realize how immersed I was in algorithm culture. I’ve been able to take a step back and truly seek content that is driven by my interests not a computer. This book does a good job of not being a complete debby downer about the algorithm, but emphasize the importance of responsible personal curation of your internet habits. The hope is that more people at least become more aware of the way algorithms rule our lives so we can make conscious decisions of where we spend our time.
Things I didn’t like so much about this book:
It was a slow start, felt more like a textbook
Went on a bit long, and I felt like points were repeated multiple times
The author is an op-ed journalist and at times this book felt more like a long-form article than a novel with a lot of anecdotal asides
May 26, 2024
Anecdotes aren't facts.
March 23, 2024
Kyle Chayka‘s account of his early years on the internet resonated particularly strongly in me. We both used forums in the mid 00s, and it was refreshing to hear this. I recently connected with people on that Internet forum through an old friend who added me to a discord group, but I joined primarily to find an old Internet friend who, I discovered, had become a victim of the ongoing opioid epidemic - the first out gay person I had ever known and whose presence helped shape my own identity. I can’t find him anywhere on social media, and I’m still concerned. But that’s another story.
My interest in this book spurred from two items: my inherent dissatisfaction with how the algorithm has shaped the internet and culture, and my experience in content marketing. Chayka uses excellent examples and ideas to illustrate his points, however, I think in his objective to coin the term filter world, sometimes goes too far in trying to create an SEO-friendly neologism. I mean, how can you not these days either? No shade here.
From infinite jest to serial experiments lain, I saw too much of myself in this tumblr pilled author. Yet I think his arguments are fair and valid, and the varied approach to each chapter makes this an engrossing read. His chapters on taste and curation stuck out to me, and I kind of wished he would write a book more in this vein. I loved his interpretation on autofiction.
This book said everything I’ve been feeling for awhile. I really enjoyed it, but he can nerd out a bit. I get it, but I worry that his digressions might make the book less accessible, especially to older readers. But maybe that’s the point. We deserve to have our interests, and in this age interests online seem only to be pathologized as “special interests”. Highly recommended for lovers of geocities and what the internet could have been if not for… well, people like me in marketing.
My interest in this book spurred from two items: my inherent dissatisfaction with how the algorithm has shaped the internet and culture, and my experience in content marketing. Chayka uses excellent examples and ideas to illustrate his points, however, I think in his objective to coin the term filter world, sometimes goes too far in trying to create an SEO-friendly neologism. I mean, how can you not these days either? No shade here.
From infinite jest to serial experiments lain, I saw too much of myself in this tumblr pilled author. Yet I think his arguments are fair and valid, and the varied approach to each chapter makes this an engrossing read. His chapters on taste and curation stuck out to me, and I kind of wished he would write a book more in this vein. I loved his interpretation on autofiction.
This book said everything I’ve been feeling for awhile. I really enjoyed it, but he can nerd out a bit. I get it, but I worry that his digressions might make the book less accessible, especially to older readers. But maybe that’s the point. We deserve to have our interests, and in this age interests online seem only to be pathologized as “special interests”. Highly recommended for lovers of geocities and what the internet could have been if not for… well, people like me in marketing.
March 2, 2024
Filterworld *is* our world. This comprehensive analysis of life after analog takes a minute to get going, but is ultimately an interesting read. Personal passions have been replaced by monetization. It’s consistently harder to be unique. That’s just a small glimpse, but you get the idea. Recommend to people who are reading my book reviews on social media. 😉
June 18, 2024
Have you ever read a book that was so frustrating that it finally convinced you after 5 years to get a goodreads account? That was my experience with Filterworld.
Failing to resolve the tension inherent in algorithmic culture
Let's start with the fact that there is a lot of contradiction in this book over whether the algorithm induces cultural flattening or diversification - the book's main thesis statement is the former, but there are quite a handful of observations about how two people on the same platform can have completely different experiences thanks to algorithmic personalisation and that can produce dissonance, isolation and a feeling of living in an echo chamber. So which is it? The author never successfully resolves the contraditions inherent in his arguments (he doesnt even bother trying). These arguments are just listed side by side, often in the same chapter and even within the same couple of pages as if they connect perfectly with one another when theres such a clear tension that needs to be resolved. Not saying algorithms cant be both flattening and silo-ing - I firmly believe they can do both, but EXPLICATE, where is your elaboration?? Where is the analysis?? These were the parts of the book that really had me flipping to the back to read the author's bio, and then I would shake my head like "yeah ok this guy is a journalist by training and it shows, he cant handle nuanced arguments".
Lack of critical analysis of tastemaking
Tastemaking in general is traditionally so deeply embedded in whiteness, heteronormativity and anglocentrism and its truly shocking that the author doesnt bother to interrogate any of these underlying assumptions while waxing lyrical about the importance of curation. WHO has historically had the resources and authority to curate?? WHO decides that subcultures that originally arose from the labour, experiences and innovation of majority-POC communities can go from being crass and banal to trendy and hot topic???
so many of these traditional institutions, museums, galleries, publishing houses, recording studios - are (1) deeply flawed, exclusionary and colonialist and (2) have been receiving less and less funding thanks to neoliberalism that has severely weakened their ability to act effectively as regulators and gatekeepers of culture in the first place. You can't blame that directly on the rise of algorithms and silicon valley. So where is the analysis of how hierarchical, elitist and exclusionary these traditional institutions are??? Is there possibly a reason why creators might be turning more and more towards algorithmic content creation? Maybe, oh idk, because of its lower barrier of entry?
I know that this book's focus is on culture, not politics, and I don't expect a full run-down of neoliberalism, colonialism and surveillance capitalism, but it's also simply not possible to extricate an analysis of culture from politics, and a total exclusion of the latter is a huge detriment to the former.
The method of critique known as "running my mouth about things I didn't do rigorous research on"
Most of the areas of culture that this book commented on -- such as the impacts of algos on tourism or interior design of coffeeshops -- I don't have any industry knowledge on, so I took the critique at face value even if I didn't find it fully convincing. However, where I DID happen to know more than the author based on my experiences, I found the criticisms did not hold any water.
For example, the jibe about how algorithms and booktok/booktube have affected the publishing industry was totally off base. Yes, algorithmic promotion of authors is problematic too but at least it gives authors more options now. Before algorithms and self-publishing, traditional publication was heavily gated behind MFA programme (masters in creative writing). Do you have any idea how white and upper middle class MFA programmes are? The book bregrudgingly admits that these creative writing programmes are "somewhat elitist" and that's all it has to say on the matter, and that felt so utterly lacking that it was laughable. People in publishing are PAINFULLY aware of how the MFA industry is riddled with so many flaws, and the book does not demonstrate ANY awareness of why people are opting one model of publication over the other, even if they are both flawed in different ways.
And then towards the end of the book, completely unnecessarily, this man took potshots at Taylor Swift and complained about Folklore and Evermore sounding similar. Again, COMPLETELY missing the point. Folklore and Evermore were acoustic, indie-inspired and alternative-rock projects promoted by Swift as sister albums that sprung from her collaboration with Aaron Dessner. They were INTENTIONALLY meant to sound similar to one another; they were products of the same period of creative experimentation during lockdown.
Many PROFESSIONAL music critics in their review of Folklore/Evermore observed that the sounds of these two albums depart significantly from the pop synths of her previous projects like Lover and Reputation, so again, the entire argument falls totally flat when considered in the wider context of Swift's discography. In the words of my friend, "you can talk about how artists feel the pressure or conform to this endless barrage of content without insulting the quality of the work. Or if you’re going to do this please offer some insight from actual music critics on why they think streaming models are reducing the quality of music."
These are small segments that don't detract from the broader argument even if they don't work, but its precisely because I was more familiar than the author on these specific fronts that the credibility of ALL the other points started eroding -- because if he could play fast and loose with these arguments, who's to say he hasn't been running his mouth this entire book? I started becoming less and less convinced and more and more annoyed when I realised this man does not know how to stay in his lane and instead just writes hot takes about things he hasn't bothered to do actual proper research on. Your snarky two-sentence QOTDs might catch some engagement on twitter/x, or even on a podcast as a sound bite, but putting these remarks in a long-form book was a serious tactical error and just made the entire thesis of the book that much less convincing.
Man shakes fist at tiktok
The whole tiktok segment was a mess. This man does not know how to use tiktok and it shows.
He just went on and on about how tiktok only values or emphasises one style of making content. There are SO many niche subcultures that are absolutely thriving on tiktok and its precisely becs of the algorithm that i can rely on these pieces filtering their way into my fyp! Tiktok even has a collections feature that i actively use to catalogue pieces of content i encounter becs they are memorable, and the algo takes note and serves me more content from that category! The algo is a tool, you can either use it or let it use you and auth seems blithely ignorant of the possibility of the former so he literally just comes across as an ageing white millennial whingeing about new tech, sorry.
Granted, he did mention a whole three chapters later about how we can break filterworld by taking responsibility in what we are consuming and be intentional so we can explore subcultures and less mainstream stuff. I was screaming at him that this is exactly what the tiktok algo is for!!
And also - author did not address how, since its inception, the social aspects of the internet have been so vital in connecting people from marginalised communities. Algorithmic personalisation does this really well too!! The popular joke on tiktok is that when you first join, you only need to interact with 10 tiktoks on your fyp and the algorithm can decide already whether youre straight or gay and serve you pieces of culture that align with your sensibilities. Like come on, thats huge! Especially for queer kids living in small conservative towns, this sense of joy and community that technology facilitates by bringing people of similar backgrounds tgt is so vital! Queer communities used to lurk in the shadows of the internet when it first started, and queer people had to actively seek out these pages, or know someone who knows someone! Accessibility is SO important! Algorithmic personalisation has facilitated such a diverse expansion of subcultural internet memes and communities, to the point where queer content even breaks into the mainstream REGULARLY.
But no, there was no such nuance to be found in this book's analysis of tiktok. It really was just "tiktok is bad because it go brr". What a total disservice to the experiences of people who actually know how to use clock app.
Whingeing! A lot of boring white millenial whingeing!
This book really grated on my nerves with how most of it was just whingeing and complaining disguised as criticism, with no critical understanding of the material and political realities that inflluence culture.
The whole airspace coffeeshop segment was sus asf. The author complaining abt generic coffeeshops that have been reproduced worldwide that are lacking in local flavour, but then he also says he purposely seeks them out for the familiarity when hes working abroad becs these spaces are most conducive for remote working professionals like himself - its self contradictory, and auth doesnt recognise that its precisely becs of people like him - affluent western PMETs that get to fly around - that drives demand for such spaces in the first place. Much later in the book he admits that his tastes / habits have been poisoned by the algo but doesnt really connect it back to these moments. He shouldve started the book exactly at the point where he went on the algo cleanse and then crafting his observations from there. The insights came too late in the book and were really too superficial and obvious for anyone who is used to living in algo culture, felt like an "uhmm duh" moment.
The tourism section was another disaster. Yes, i definitely agree that the uneven ways algorithms promote some aesthetic and instagrammable destinations more than others can cause a lot of destructive impacts on local economies, cultures and ecologies, but MISTER that is the ENTIRE LEGACY of the tourist industry, algorithms are just speedrunning through that logic. If you didnt want a hyper-touristy, inauthentic experience of another country do you not realise that you can use the google search bar to find other kinds of experiences? Homestays and village stays? Use instagram/social media to get directly in touch with small local tourist businesses for a more authentic experience? Do your research and put in the work if you want a meaningful and memorable visit? Instead you lazily opt for the first thing thats suggested to you on a google homepage, and then gripe abt the fact that its oversaturated??? Uhmmm?????
Skill issue.
Look, this isn't the worst book I've read. But it is the most frustrating, because it engaged with an aspect of society that deeply resonated with my lived experience, an aspect that I was so curious to learn more about and understand in greater depth, and totally and utterly flopped. There were good things here as well, but ultimately when I closed the book the only thing I could feel was relief that the entire ordeal was finally over. Most of the arguments that this book was trying to make I'm already familiar with in one form or another, and have been floating around the collective brain cell of social media for a while, so there truly was nothing original here.
The Social Dilemma, a documentary available on Netflix that came out 4 years before this book, engaged with the same issue but focused a lot more on the in-depth mechanisms of how algorithms hijack our psychological mechanisms. I was hoping for something like that -- well-researched insights from experts of specific subject fields that looked at how their expertise intersected with something that's relevant to all of us. This was not that.
All I can say is that for a book that was published in 2024, what it has to say feels instantly dated.
Failing to resolve the tension inherent in algorithmic culture
Let's start with the fact that there is a lot of contradiction in this book over whether the algorithm induces cultural flattening or diversification - the book's main thesis statement is the former, but there are quite a handful of observations about how two people on the same platform can have completely different experiences thanks to algorithmic personalisation and that can produce dissonance, isolation and a feeling of living in an echo chamber. So which is it? The author never successfully resolves the contraditions inherent in his arguments (he doesnt even bother trying). These arguments are just listed side by side, often in the same chapter and even within the same couple of pages as if they connect perfectly with one another when theres such a clear tension that needs to be resolved. Not saying algorithms cant be both flattening and silo-ing - I firmly believe they can do both, but EXPLICATE, where is your elaboration?? Where is the analysis?? These were the parts of the book that really had me flipping to the back to read the author's bio, and then I would shake my head like "yeah ok this guy is a journalist by training and it shows, he cant handle nuanced arguments".
Lack of critical analysis of tastemaking
Tastemaking in general is traditionally so deeply embedded in whiteness, heteronormativity and anglocentrism and its truly shocking that the author doesnt bother to interrogate any of these underlying assumptions while waxing lyrical about the importance of curation. WHO has historically had the resources and authority to curate?? WHO decides that subcultures that originally arose from the labour, experiences and innovation of majority-POC communities can go from being crass and banal to trendy and hot topic???
so many of these traditional institutions, museums, galleries, publishing houses, recording studios - are (1) deeply flawed, exclusionary and colonialist and (2) have been receiving less and less funding thanks to neoliberalism that has severely weakened their ability to act effectively as regulators and gatekeepers of culture in the first place. You can't blame that directly on the rise of algorithms and silicon valley. So where is the analysis of how hierarchical, elitist and exclusionary these traditional institutions are??? Is there possibly a reason why creators might be turning more and more towards algorithmic content creation? Maybe, oh idk, because of its lower barrier of entry?
I know that this book's focus is on culture, not politics, and I don't expect a full run-down of neoliberalism, colonialism and surveillance capitalism, but it's also simply not possible to extricate an analysis of culture from politics, and a total exclusion of the latter is a huge detriment to the former.
The method of critique known as "running my mouth about things I didn't do rigorous research on"
Most of the areas of culture that this book commented on -- such as the impacts of algos on tourism or interior design of coffeeshops -- I don't have any industry knowledge on, so I took the critique at face value even if I didn't find it fully convincing. However, where I DID happen to know more than the author based on my experiences, I found the criticisms did not hold any water.
For example, the jibe about how algorithms and booktok/booktube have affected the publishing industry was totally off base. Yes, algorithmic promotion of authors is problematic too but at least it gives authors more options now. Before algorithms and self-publishing, traditional publication was heavily gated behind MFA programme (masters in creative writing). Do you have any idea how white and upper middle class MFA programmes are? The book bregrudgingly admits that these creative writing programmes are "somewhat elitist" and that's all it has to say on the matter, and that felt so utterly lacking that it was laughable. People in publishing are PAINFULLY aware of how the MFA industry is riddled with so many flaws, and the book does not demonstrate ANY awareness of why people are opting one model of publication over the other, even if they are both flawed in different ways.
And then towards the end of the book, completely unnecessarily, this man took potshots at Taylor Swift and complained about Folklore and Evermore sounding similar. Again, COMPLETELY missing the point. Folklore and Evermore were acoustic, indie-inspired and alternative-rock projects promoted by Swift as sister albums that sprung from her collaboration with Aaron Dessner. They were INTENTIONALLY meant to sound similar to one another; they were products of the same period of creative experimentation during lockdown.
Many PROFESSIONAL music critics in their review of Folklore/Evermore observed that the sounds of these two albums depart significantly from the pop synths of her previous projects like Lover and Reputation, so again, the entire argument falls totally flat when considered in the wider context of Swift's discography. In the words of my friend, "you can talk about how artists feel the pressure or conform to this endless barrage of content without insulting the quality of the work. Or if you’re going to do this please offer some insight from actual music critics on why they think streaming models are reducing the quality of music."
These are small segments that don't detract from the broader argument even if they don't work, but its precisely because I was more familiar than the author on these specific fronts that the credibility of ALL the other points started eroding -- because if he could play fast and loose with these arguments, who's to say he hasn't been running his mouth this entire book? I started becoming less and less convinced and more and more annoyed when I realised this man does not know how to stay in his lane and instead just writes hot takes about things he hasn't bothered to do actual proper research on. Your snarky two-sentence QOTDs might catch some engagement on twitter/x, or even on a podcast as a sound bite, but putting these remarks in a long-form book was a serious tactical error and just made the entire thesis of the book that much less convincing.
Man shakes fist at tiktok
The whole tiktok segment was a mess. This man does not know how to use tiktok and it shows.
He just went on and on about how tiktok only values or emphasises one style of making content. There are SO many niche subcultures that are absolutely thriving on tiktok and its precisely becs of the algorithm that i can rely on these pieces filtering their way into my fyp! Tiktok even has a collections feature that i actively use to catalogue pieces of content i encounter becs they are memorable, and the algo takes note and serves me more content from that category! The algo is a tool, you can either use it or let it use you and auth seems blithely ignorant of the possibility of the former so he literally just comes across as an ageing white millennial whingeing about new tech, sorry.
Granted, he did mention a whole three chapters later about how we can break filterworld by taking responsibility in what we are consuming and be intentional so we can explore subcultures and less mainstream stuff. I was screaming at him that this is exactly what the tiktok algo is for!!
And also - author did not address how, since its inception, the social aspects of the internet have been so vital in connecting people from marginalised communities. Algorithmic personalisation does this really well too!! The popular joke on tiktok is that when you first join, you only need to interact with 10 tiktoks on your fyp and the algorithm can decide already whether youre straight or gay and serve you pieces of culture that align with your sensibilities. Like come on, thats huge! Especially for queer kids living in small conservative towns, this sense of joy and community that technology facilitates by bringing people of similar backgrounds tgt is so vital! Queer communities used to lurk in the shadows of the internet when it first started, and queer people had to actively seek out these pages, or know someone who knows someone! Accessibility is SO important! Algorithmic personalisation has facilitated such a diverse expansion of subcultural internet memes and communities, to the point where queer content even breaks into the mainstream REGULARLY.
But no, there was no such nuance to be found in this book's analysis of tiktok. It really was just "tiktok is bad because it go brr". What a total disservice to the experiences of people who actually know how to use clock app.
Whingeing! A lot of boring white millenial whingeing!
This book really grated on my nerves with how most of it was just whingeing and complaining disguised as criticism, with no critical understanding of the material and political realities that inflluence culture.
The whole airspace coffeeshop segment was sus asf. The author complaining abt generic coffeeshops that have been reproduced worldwide that are lacking in local flavour, but then he also says he purposely seeks them out for the familiarity when hes working abroad becs these spaces are most conducive for remote working professionals like himself - its self contradictory, and auth doesnt recognise that its precisely becs of people like him - affluent western PMETs that get to fly around - that drives demand for such spaces in the first place. Much later in the book he admits that his tastes / habits have been poisoned by the algo but doesnt really connect it back to these moments. He shouldve started the book exactly at the point where he went on the algo cleanse and then crafting his observations from there. The insights came too late in the book and were really too superficial and obvious for anyone who is used to living in algo culture, felt like an "uhmm duh" moment.
The tourism section was another disaster. Yes, i definitely agree that the uneven ways algorithms promote some aesthetic and instagrammable destinations more than others can cause a lot of destructive impacts on local economies, cultures and ecologies, but MISTER that is the ENTIRE LEGACY of the tourist industry, algorithms are just speedrunning through that logic. If you didnt want a hyper-touristy, inauthentic experience of another country do you not realise that you can use the google search bar to find other kinds of experiences? Homestays and village stays? Use instagram/social media to get directly in touch with small local tourist businesses for a more authentic experience? Do your research and put in the work if you want a meaningful and memorable visit? Instead you lazily opt for the first thing thats suggested to you on a google homepage, and then gripe abt the fact that its oversaturated??? Uhmmm?????
Skill issue.
Look, this isn't the worst book I've read. But it is the most frustrating, because it engaged with an aspect of society that deeply resonated with my lived experience, an aspect that I was so curious to learn more about and understand in greater depth, and totally and utterly flopped. There were good things here as well, but ultimately when I closed the book the only thing I could feel was relief that the entire ordeal was finally over. Most of the arguments that this book was trying to make I'm already familiar with in one form or another, and have been floating around the collective brain cell of social media for a while, so there truly was nothing original here.
The Social Dilemma, a documentary available on Netflix that came out 4 years before this book, engaged with the same issue but focused a lot more on the in-depth mechanisms of how algorithms hijack our psychological mechanisms. I was hoping for something like that -- well-researched insights from experts of specific subject fields that looked at how their expertise intersected with something that's relevant to all of us. This was not that.
All I can say is that for a book that was published in 2024, what it has to say feels instantly dated.
August 12, 2024
Broad gesturing toward something that could be interesting and insightful if examined through a more scientific lens. Without actual data to back up the claims they fall flat and are more observational and descriptive than anything. The thing is, these are mostly things we are all already observing. Wish the book had offered more insight.
March 31, 2024
This is interesting and also a bummer- how algorithms are filtering everyone into the common denominator/uniform option rather than niche-ing down like we'd hope. It makes you wonder what you'd like without social media and a smart phone.
July 26, 2024
This book could have been an essay. A lot of references, providing historical background, mentions of other people and brands do not make it interesting. The only part which could make it valuable is the last 20% of the book. Author just complaining that algorithms are not humans and blames them for things he does not like.
August 2, 2024
An interesting read with a few insightful ideas , though it did not meet my expectations. The beginning was promising and it felt like I was getting exactly what I wanted, but after ~45% it appeared repetitive and quite monotonous.
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