#14. Curation vs Algorithms
On making the internet 'fun' again
Hello, and welcome (back)! At some point, you signed up for this newsletter, which is currently coming to you from my cosy kitchen in Geneva, where at the time of writing, I look like this.
I was listening to Ezra Klein* recently on how the internet is changing as a result of our digital lives being curated by algorithms rather than by people, and it brought up a shift I’ve been noticing in how we use the internet over the past decade or so. This shift can be characterised by three small shifts in my personal digital cosmos circa 2013 - (i) Facebook and Instagram's algorithms started changing to reflect posts that were receiving more reactions first, instead of in chronological order; (ii) a music platform called Spotify started to surge in popularity because it recommended more of the same music you liked; and (iii) the StumbleUpon extension, a crowd-fed catalogue of random sites across the internet, was retired.
Those changes still bring up a little twinge of nostalgia for the internet as I had discovered it, a place where you could get lost and find things in its corners wholly outside your daily universe. The internet of 8tracks and Tumblr and becoming friends with other bloggers. This was not internet Phase 1, or even perhaps internet Phase 2, but elder-ish millennials will recognise this as the internet of their teenage years, where you could, in large part, curate your digital existence under the guise of an internet avatar. Before machine learning and algorithms and generative AI actively and perhaps unsolicitedly started to filter and shape the majority of our experiences on the internet.
Kyle Chayka reaches similar conclusions in his article on how the internet is not fun anymore:
"Remember having fun online? It meant stumbling onto a Web site you’d never imagined existed, receiving a meme you hadn’t already seen regurgitated a dozen times, and maybe even playing a little video game in your browser. These experiences don’t seem as readily available now as they were a decade ago. In large part, this is because a handful of giant social networks have taken over the open space of the Internet, centralizing and homogenizing our experiences through their own opaque and shifting content-sorting systems. When those platforms decay, as Twitter has under Elon Musk, there is no other comparable platform in the ecosystem to replace them."
With the advent of Google defining our search results, of Spotify pigeonholing listeners into the same kinds of music over and over again, even making a point to play music you have already heard on your Discover Weekly, of the viralisation of videos (Youtube), trends (TikTok), thought pieces (X/NYT/other US-centric newspapers), newsletters (Substack), restaurants (FourSquare/Eater/Google Maps), shopping (Amazon, Alibaba, Temu), and recommendations for near anything you instinctively reach to search online, I worry a lot about how much we are able to truly wander in the vast gardens of the internet and listen to people beyond the immediate reach of what is constantly being pushed towards us.
As our online world is becoming increasingly governed by those very dominant power structures that brought the world to a place where it distracts you with consumerism while encouraging you to tear each other apart. As US- and Chinese-owned networks take over our feeds and as a consequence, our choices over the information we consume, it is increasingly less enjoyable and more lonely to be on the internet. Even if you are an avid culler of the chaff like I am. And while we can infinitely scroll our ways out of situations that make us anxious or bored or empty, I would argue that our true selves exist in the spaces, in the intentionality of exploring the infiniteness of what we can create if we just give ourselves the time to wander. To tinker. To play.
Why does it matter? Perhaps because in my ideation of myself (and of human beings in general), I am a curator, an explorer, and finding the new in the vast swathes of the mainstream is as much tied to my sense of feeling free in this digital-adjacent in life as anything. Not so much tied to planting flags as to carving out pockets of community with people with whom I share little loves. I may never meet these people in real life, and we may not share the same political or world views, but for a moment, we can take a seat next to each other in the garden and nerd out about an obscure artist or a trippy website or an essay that touched both of us.
Over the past few years, I, like other people, have trickled off Instagram and other forms of social media, have shallowed my phone use to mostly for personal messages, puzzles and occasional browsing, and try to live my life as much offline as possible and in the real world. I wonder how much of it has been a reaction to the fact that it feels like there isn't that much internet left to find. Like other curators whose love language is sharing the things they chance upon in their amblings, I feel myself having to search harder and harder to find things that are truly fresh and not instead a result of a collection of algorithms jointly suggesting the same thing.
In Spanish, the word cura refers to both a priest and a cure, and the word curate shares a root with the Latin for a person who takes care of or cures the souls in a parish. That makes sense. A good curator looks out for the souls of those they are sharing something with in hopes to make the viewer feel something that stays with them and perhaps changes them in a way. Even if that viewer is yourself. Think of an exhibition you went to that you really enjoyed. Think of a playlist (made by a person), that you really enjoyed listening to. Think of a movie whose cinematic shifts you felt yourself ebb and flow with. Think of quote or a piece of paper you saved because it meant something to your distinctive experience as a human being.
All that is the power of curation. The power of putting thought and love (and time!) into how things are on their own, as a whole, and in the ways in which they are connected. To how they may find or re-find people in different states of their lives and simultaneously heal them, kindle something in them, or take a pickaxe to the worlds they make have otherwise taken for granted.
So, how can you curate a space for yourself on the internet and in your life as an act of resistance and togetherness? A few suggestions to get started:
Seek out different sources for the kinds of information you digest on the internet - music, videos, news articles, essays. Look out not for ‘the best’ or ‘the most popular’, but the less well-known, the niche, that one suggestion on one person’s list that you like the other things on.
Start to identify your own taste profile. You are the only person in the universe who will like the exact subset of things you like, so honour it, enjoy it, stretch its limits. Do a random search for an imaginary genre or mood rather than a ‘top ten’ list, stalk your friends’ (or strangers’) playlists to see what they’re listening to, see what writers you like recommend (e.g. on Substack). There is too much out there to let the algorithm put you in one box.
Ask people, not the first Google result you see, for suggestions. “I’m looking for new music/new things to read, what’s something you listened to/read recently that touched you?” Make a running list of recommendations, try some things out. You may not like it at all, or you may end up loving it, but you’ll never know until you try.
Spend time off the internet. Find events that are happening around you and try to pick something you wouldn’t normally do (yes, it’s hard, I know, but try). There are events all over on MeetUp.com, your city’s website, Facebook events(!), that local anarchist website that actually does a decent job of listing all the events happening each day. Try to do it alone, if you can (yes, yes, it’s hard, I know, but again, try). You might discover something about yourself.
Reply to this email or leave a comment with your own tips for you curate the internet. And share with someone you think might enjoy this!
*Yes, curious that what started this train off was a podcast that so many people seem to have caught on to and that perhaps I was unconsciously avoiding just to put off the mainstream for a little longer? But Ezra is a fresh 2024 discovery, a recommendation, in fact, and I'm so glad it found me.
Finally, a quick poll before you go!