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The Banality of Online Recommendation Culture
A recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations.
By Kyle Chayka
October 30, 2024
Illustration by Ariel Davis
Save this story
In the 2010s, affiliate marketing became a dominant strain of online business models. The Wirecutte... See more
A recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations.
By Kyle Chayka
October 30, 2024
Illustration by Ariel Davis
Save this story
In the 2010s, affiliate marketing became a dominant strain of online business models. The Wirecutte... See more
Kyle Chayka • The Banality of Online Recommendation Culture | the New Yorker
“I think it also has to do with the proportion of one’s daily experience to dispatches from the past,” Sacasas said. Pre-internet, “the totality of my day wasn't enclosed by this experience of media artifacts coming to me.”
Charlie Warzel • How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star
Caufield's main argument was that we have become swept away by streams – the collapse of information into single-track timelines of events. The conversational feed design of email inboxes, group chats, and InstaTwitBook is fleeting – they're only concerned with self-assertive immediate thoughts that rush by us in a few moments.
Maggie Appleton 🧭 • A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden
Kiser’s background is in news products — he previously worked as a product manager for Spin , Forbes and Business Insider — and he’s fascinated by how the way information is packaged shapes our experience of it. He’s been particularly influenced by the writer and photographer Craig Mod, who in a 2012 essay coined the concept of “edges”: the ways ph... See more
How to stay sane *AND* informed
What does it feel like to know everything all the time without taking your eyes off a small, luminous rectangle? What does it feel like to be a child of the phone? Where are the blinks, so seamless, so highly resolved, taking our minds now? We’re starting to find out. The phone is becoming visible. Whether it’s too late or not is hard to say.
Nichol
One such curator is Derrick Gee, a former online radio d.j. who lives in Australia. I first encountered Gee on TikTok and was pulled in by his architect-ish look: thin wireframe glasses and stylishly baggy, often monochrome outfits. He records videos of himself talking into a microphone in a low, soothing voice, breaking down trends in contemporary... See more
Kyle Chayka • The New Generation of Online Culture Curators | The New Yorker
I think Substack changed the culture on readers paying for writing, which is generally a very good thing. But that also leads to this urge of trying to monetize everything, even very casual stuff. What it reminds me of is trying to establish my career by tweeting a lot circa 2013-2018, when it seemed to matter. Imagine if that structure pushed ever
... See moreEmily Sundberg • The Machine in the Garden. - By Emily Sundberg - Feed Me
Running a newsletter like DD is, at its core, an expression of taste. It’s me saying, ‘Here’s what I think deserves your attention this week.’ A process that Stepfanie Tyler describes beautifully in her piece on taste as the new intelligence:
“Curation is care. It says: I thought about this. I chose it. I didn’t just repost it. I didn’t just regurgi... See more
“Curation is care. It says: I thought about this. I chose it. I didn’t just repost it. I didn’t just regurgi... See more