Alex Dobrenko

One of the wildest moments of this conversation for me was when I made a comment that I thought was just a universally believed truth about the post-platform internet: that people these days prefer individuals to brands. And then Nilay told me, “No, that’s wrong. It’s not people who are doing that; it’s the systems that deliver content to people” —... See more

Sometime since the rise of recommendation algorithms, social media became a little... cacophonous. Every page refresh serves you new and personalised content on a silver platter, just for you. Although, many people seem to be growing tired of this constant flow of information. In 2024, I began a video series, Corners of the Internet, sharing... See more

Since the note is in my notebook, it presumably has some meaning to me.

If I think back to those corporate meetings I was part of early in my career, it’s easy to see today’s decision-making. A decade ago cultural criticism was a sparkly pixie dust you could spread over a business to give it a veneer of prestige. But in a world where TikToks dwarf all over forms of consumption and a video that someone spent a day... See more

In fact I have abandoned altogether that kind of pointless entry; instead I tell what some would call lies. “That’s simply not true,” the members of my family frequently tell me when they come up against my memory of a shared event. “The party was not for you, the spider was not a black widow, it wasn’t that way at all .” Very likely they are... See more