“Good books are stunning charges of vital energy” —Elena Ferrante
The Banality of Online Recommendation Culture
A recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations.
By Kyle Chayka
October 30, 2024
Illustration by Ariel Davis
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In the 2010s, affiliate marketing became a dominant strain of online business models. The... See more
A recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations.
By Kyle Chayka
October 30, 2024
Illustration by Ariel Davis
Save this story
In the 2010s, affiliate marketing became a dominant strain of online business models. The... See more
Kyle Chayka • The Banality of Online Recommendation Culture | the New Yorker
That labor amounts to constant self-promotion in the form of cheap trend-following, ever-changing posting strategies, and the nagging feeling that what you are really doing with your time is marketing, not art. Under the tyranny of algorithmic media distribution, artists, authors — anyone whose work concerns itself with what it means to be human —... See more
Rebecca Jennings • Everybody Has to Self-Promote Now. Nobody Wants To.
Literature is at once the most intimate and the most articulate of the arts. It cannot impart its effect through the sense or the nerves as the other arts can; it is beautiful only through the intelligence; it is the mind speaking to the mind ... if it fails to express precisely the meaning of the author, if it does not say HIM, [sic] it says... See more