
Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #69

“We’ve never had more freedom, more choices. But in reality, most people are subtly funneled into the same streams, the same pools of ‘socially approved’ culture, cuisine and ideas.... You might think you’re choosing, but you never really are. When your ideas, interests, and even daily meals are largely inspired by whatever was already approved, al... See more
320 / Resisting algorithmic comfort
The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
Aaron Z. Lewisaaronzlewis.comSomewhere between the late 2000’s aggregator sites and the contemporary For You Page, we lost our ability to curate the web. Worse still, we’ve outsourced our discovery to corporate algorithms. Most of us did it in exchange for an endless content feed.
Where have all the websites gone?
We’re lost in the garden of forking memes, and the idea of linear progress along a single historical time line seems like a quaint artifact from a much simpler era. Grand visions of the future are few and far between; the pop cultural landscape is littered with post-apocalyptic dystopias. If we want to make sense of how we got here, we have to unde... See more
Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
It’s difficult to describe how different the pre-turbocharged algorithmically determined feed internet felt compared to today’s hyper-accelerated information environment. Back then forums felt like cozy rural communes, today’s social media driven environment is like the urban jungle. To the extent that the feed algorithm is accurate, it feels merit... See more
Eugene Wei • The Kids are Alright: An Interview with Eugene Wei and Julie Young (Gift Culture, Part 4)
Some suggested that the digital garden was a backlash to the internet we’ve become grudgingly accustomed to, where things go viral, change is looked down upon, and sites are one-dimensional.
technologyreview.com • Digital Gardens Let You Cultivate Your Own Little Bit of the Internet
The dark forest theory of the web points to the increasingly life-like but life-less state of being online. Most open and publicly available spaces on the web are overrun with bots, advertisers, trolls, data scrapers, clickbait, keyword-stuffing “content creators,” and algorithmically manipulated junk.
Maggie Appleton • The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
This shift towards a global sameness, driven by digital platforms' algorithms, challenges the very notion of personal taste. As these platforms prioritize content or products that resonate on a mass scale, they nudge us toward a homogenized cultural landscape. The result is a world where diversity of thought and creativity often gets drowned out by... See more