post-platform–post-feed
Everyone’s posting about 2016, with a heavy dose of nostalgia.
In 2016, Instagram switched their default feed from purely reverse chronological feed to algorithmically-sorted. In retrospect, this marks the beginning of a shift towards a passive, spoon-fed internet.
Product design matters — people are hungry for digital tools that actually allow them... See more
In 2016, Instagram switched their default feed from purely reverse chronological feed to algorithmically-sorted. In retrospect, this marks the beginning of a shift towards a passive, spoon-fed internet.
Product design matters — people are hungry for digital tools that actually allow them... See more
New_ Public (@wearenewpublic)
At some point, you have to decide: Do you want to directly contribute to the enshittification of the daily life, or not?
It’s very, very easy to throw up your hands and say there’s nothing you can do. It’s harder to take the time to think about and act on using whatever power you have in productive ways. This could mean organizing in your workplace,... See more
It’s very, very easy to throw up your hands and say there’s nothing you can do. It’s harder to take the time to think about and act on using whatever power you have in productive ways. This could mean organizing in your workplace,... See more
Everything is private equity <3
By contrast, when “everything is at our fingertips” — when art is compressed into the same omnipresent and infinite digital non-time as every random piece of internet garbage — I think that we’re left feeling incomplete on some basic human level, like we’re the practitioners of a vibey old religion whose rituals were all but erased, and whose... See more
Streaming is an affront to God
And so, when people valorize these kinds of outmoded media, and outmoded acts of endurance and devotion, I don’t think it’s just about empty nostalgia. Because these are touchstones and processes — precisely in their inefficiency — by which people can open themselves up to transformative experience, and honor the depth and fullness of what art means to us.
My optimistic take is that the faux-culture ecosystem will drive more people towards small-scale, humanistic culture. But this brings us back to the “we” from Chayka’s piece. The vast majority of people on earth are going to drown in a lukewarm bath of AI gruel, and there is probably no effective means of mass resistance on their behalf. The... See more
The New Yorker Roundup
Boredom is when you do the things that make you feel like you have life under control. Not being bored is why you always feel busy, why you keep “not having time” to take a package to the post office or work on your novel. You do have time—you just spend it on your phone. By refusing to ever let your brain rest, you are choosing to watch other... See more
Kate Lindsay • You might just have to be bored
Now in his mid-30s, Chayka questions whether the nearly endless availability of cultural content to younger generations has made them value it less, compared to the effort it once took to discover what you might love. But a decade or more ago, I was wondering the same thing about people his age. Before that, perhaps older people thought the same... See more
bookforum.com • Kyle Chayka Looks at Our Supposedly Flat New World
That’s the reality of algorithmic society. it creates an endless information loop—like the snake swallowing its own tail. And a fog of sameness descends upon the land.
But this can’t last forever. Human history teaches us that societies resisting change eventually collapse from sheer inertia. And insurgents show up on the scene to accelerate the
... See morehonest-broker.com • The Return of the Weirdo - By Ted Gioia - The Honest Broker
In fact, Chayka treats the concept of “taste” throughout with a preciousness I doubt he actually is unsophisticated enough to hold. He cites contradictory definitions, mobilizing Voltaire one moment to say that taste must be cultivated and effortful, and then Montesquieu and Agamben the next to say that taste works by rules we do not (cannot?)... See more
bookforum.com • Kyle Chayka Looks at Our Supposedly Flat New World
I stand alongside Chayka in looking for strategies to pushing in the other direction. But I can’t help rolling my eyes when he talks as if it’s any kind of novelty for artists (much less “influencers”) to find their visions stymied by commercial demand. Again, one advantage of the algorithmic version may be that it’s externalized in ways that become easier to spot and critique.
I get the impulse to recover a more democratic online world compared to the top-down dictates of Silicon Valley. But in seeking a more humane tech future, nostalgia is more hindrance than help; the alternatives will need to be legible to new generations weaned on social-media feeds.