MK

Researchers have found instead that the distribution of attention remains highly unequal across a wide range of digital contexts, ensuring the hypervisibility of a few and the invisibility or near-invisibility of the great majority. The winner-take-all (or winner-take-most) logic, sustained in part by algorithms that ratify and reinforce what is

Vigorously participatory curatorial subcultures certainly exist, but in practice, they require too much time and energy to have a broad appeal. People enjoy sharing their discoveries with friends, and they may at least occasionally rate and review items. But most people, most of the time, leave the hard work of curation to others — or to

Welcome to the flat era of fashion. Flat is what happens when consumers buy clothing on the basis of how it looks in two dimensions, in an image to be shared on social media.

A social network is an idle, inactive system—a Rolodex of contacts, a notebook of sales targets, a yearbook of possible soul mates. But social media is active—hyperactive, really—spewing material across those networks instead of leaving them alone until needed.

Truly democratizing cultural creativity, one might argue, would promote the development of skills and capacities rather than minimize the need for them.

Flat is in essence a process of homogenization. Today it doesn’t matter where an influencer lives, because she dresses like she’s from the internet, and that’s all that counts.