Sublime

Taki claimed he wanted to “shake up the stodgy world of so-called ‘conservative’ opinion,”1 which is pretty blatant code for “We’re the opposite of National Review.”

Even the massive political polarization we’re currently witnessing is an expression of algorithm-driven conformity,

When I first started writing on here, I felt like the values were ideas, quality writing, and honesty, but now writers seem to be rewarded for algo hacks like posting on a schedule, commenting, liking, restacking. The distortion of purpose, which may have originally been to “meaningfully contribute to discussion or take pride in the quality of one’

. Years ago, the idea that online life would be dominantly funded by advertising coalesced into conventional wisdom, and we’ve been living with the consequences ever since. The utopian assumption that views and clicks would accrue to the highest-quality content failed to understand a basic lurking reality - that the monetization of attention leads

algorithmic feeds had made it harder to figure out her own style preferences.

In fact, it felt weird and empty when there wasn’t anyone to be furious about. The days between shamings felt like days picking at fingernails, treading water.” Web 2.0 had curdled; its organizing principle was shifting.

In her piece about Trump as a “podcast bro,” Tressie McMillan Cottom notes that “if you tune out their words (and who among us doesn’t tune out when listening to a podcast) you are still consuming the cadence and texture of the podcast bro style.” That texture remains the same regardless of the content or its political valence; McMillan Cottom like

Epistemic exploitation was coined by Nora Berenstain in 2016, for instance, to describe the injustice caused when marginalized people are expected to share their knowledge.

Distant abstractions are easier to antagonize than “living, breathing interlocutors.”