my social feeds seemed to finish their years-long transformation from a neighborhood populated with friends to a glossy condo development of brands.
Anne Helen Petersen • Culture Study | Anne Helen Petersen | Substack
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my social feeds seemed to finish their years-long transformation from a neighborhood populated with friends to a glossy condo development of brands.
In the 2010s many of our public spaces started to be molded, physically and literally, by the market advantage of luring patrons looking for highly Instagrammable shots. Businesses that once paid large sums of money to have photographs taken for advertisements that cost even more to run now had access to an army of free labor, taking pictures for f... See more
Freddie deBoer • Review: Kyle Chayka's Filterworld
Influencers, now a slowly fading cliché in the Internet’s tableau vivant, found success articulating the cult of personality, and marketing themselves as direct-to-consumer-goods. The shift away from this algorithmic surrender can be traced to the macro and micro “creator economies” spawned by the likes of Patreon, Substack, OnlyFans and even Cameo... See more
Eileen Isagon Skyers • Dirt: Are we post-platform?
I was entering adulthood and trying to live my childhood dream, but now, to be “authentic,” I had to be the product I had long been posting online, as opposed to the person I was growing up to be.
New York Times • Opinion | YouTube Gave Me Everything. Then I Grew Up.
It’s never felt more plausible that the age of social media might end—and soon.
Social media was never a natural way to work, play, and socialize, though it did become second nature.
The shift began 20 years ago or so, when networked computers became sufficiently ubiquitous that people began using them to build and manage relationships. Social n
... See moreIan Bogost • The Age of Social Media Is Ending
Kids will not believe me when I say this, but people didn’t always absorb their “content” by way of mysterious algorithmic black magic on endlessly-scrolling crack feeds. We used to type web addresses into our browsers, and actually visit our favorite sites. This, going to “www dot college shitpost dot com” or whatever, was itself considered a radi
... See moreThe overall digital environment is dictated by tech companies with ruthlessly capitalist, expansionary motives, which do not provide the most fertile ground for culture. While the magazine fashion editor may periodically use their ability to pick out and promote a previously unheard voice, the algorithmic feed never will; it can only iterate on est
... See more