The Content Creator as Algorithmic Folk Artist

The internet is magic and creators are its purest expression. Where most people see a cultural oddity, I see an entire generation bypassing traditional gatekeepers for the first time in history.

For the best part of a decade, people have been making content for an algorithm, not the audience. Worse, they haven’t been creating things for themselves. So if the feeds can no longer be relied upon to put content in front of new eyeballs then people are free to make the things that they want to make. Rather than making things that float well at ... See more

Eichhorn uses the potent term “content capital”—a riff on Pierre Bourdieu’s “cultural capital”—to describe the way in which a fluency in posting online can determine the success, or even the existence, of an artist’s work.

“Cultural producers who, in the past, may have focused on writing books or producing films or making art must now also spend con... See more

The algorithms that shape our cultural landscape are not inherently malicious. They are indifferent. Their purpose is not to destroy art but to optimize engagement—a goal that, while profitable, is fundamentally incompatible with the principles of artistic innovation.

For Millennials, the first generation to grow up with these technologies, the chal... See more