Are You Merely A Creation Of The Algorithm?
We're not consuming content anymore. The content is consuming us.
Then we will no longer be little children, tossed like waves and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, or by clever strategies that would lead us astray. - Ephesians 4:14
When I was planning this article I caught myself thinking 'This could be the one that really goes viral, that takes me over the top'. It's vulnerable to admit that there is some small-minded part of me that cares about such things. I proudly refuse to look at the Substack trending chart (maybe because I know my name does not feature; 'the bravery of being out of range').
But that is actually what this article is about: the industrial-scale farming of the clout-chasing pygmy within us, and its consequences.
This video about a white, right-wing reggae 'artist' describes him as a 'creation of the algorithm' who realised that inserting anti-gay and anti-feminist content into his ultra-mid AI-generated fake roots reggae gave him a significant algorithmic boost. The presenter of that very same video is also, in my opinion, a creation of the algorithm, but we won't go there for now.
Luigi Mangione, the man accused of a healthcare CEO's murder, seems to be another example of someone who 'thinks for himself' and 'does his own research', albeit that he is significantly the intellectual superior of the 'don't be gay' reggae faker. You can spot these people by the hodge podge of disparate ideologies which have been cut and pasted together from going down a succession of YouTube rabbit holes. Is he a socialist? Is he an anarchist? Is he alt-right? None of the above, because all of these imply some sort of coherent ideology (I mean internally coherent, not necessarily coherent in the grand scheme of things). Hence the difficulty commentators have had in working out where Luigi is 'coming from' intellectually. The reality is, he's coming from 'the internet'.
This is not limited to terminally confused white Americans. We likely all know someone who is essentially a creation of the algorithm, who holds a grab-bag ideology with no coherent structure, yet imagines themselves 'red-pilled' in some way.
The point is not that people are radicalised, people have always become radicalised by extreme ideologies or opinions. The difference between that and modern radicalisation is that now it is targeted at their individual proclivities, blindspots and weaknesses, rather than targeting groups of people en masse, like 'the working class'.
This dude likes reggae, but is also afraid he might be gay, and fears women and other races. The algorithm works this out from what he's clicking on, then serves up a platter of content perfectly tailored to those tendencies: it's not a conspiracy as such, you simply get more of whatever you click on, and to keep you clicking, it gradually ramps up the controversy factor. So if you're not careful, the default is to find yourself at the extreme end of every ideological branch, although gunning down a CEO in broad daylight is probably (hopefully) an extreme outlier.
So, Luigi (or someone like him) is intelligent, extremely online, and watches videos discussing Kant. But, he also fears that society is collapsing and clicks on doomer content which gradually hardens into videos praising the Unabomber. Or could then the solution be found within the Network State concept? He is served up content about The Sovereign Individual and reviews of Ayn Rand's books. This leads into a subtitled speech from Georgia Meloni. He is offered Trump content but doesn't click on it, feeling he is above that sort of thing, yet does click on some Curtis Yarvin interviews. He watches recommended videos on how to access the dark net and soon, someone is dead.
Everyone becomes the sum total of whatever rabbitholes the algorithm has led them down, while imagining that they are uniquely privileged to know the Truth. They then put their thoughts into ChatGPT and are rewarded with glowing confirmation of what they already believed. This is algorithmic bricolage topped off with a heavy serving of confirmation bias.
We imagine we're DYOR and thinking for ourselves, yet are we merely being manufactured like intellectual Frankenstein's monsters by the algorithm? That long debate we had with someone who disagreed with us on Facebook or wherever got our blood pumping, but do we realise the simple fact that we are actually working for Meta when we get dragged into that scenario? We are paid in dopamine, sure, but unfortunately that's not a currency the bank will accept when it's time to pay the mortgage. We're not consuming content anymore. The content is consuming us.
The thing that we don't want to look in the eye as it slouches towards us, is that we are becoming ever more deeply enmeshed in a symbiotic - or maybe parasitic - relationship with algorithmically programmed technology. We imagine that we are in control. And by the 'we' here I mean human beings generally - obviously you and I are not in control in any sense, but we might imagine that at least Bezos, Musk or Zuckerberg do have some agency within this landscape. Yet even their choices are made within a feedback loop of which the algorithms they paid for to be created are at least half in control. There's a reason myths like The Sorceror's Apprentice or The Golem keep popping up nowadays.
There is of course a deeper explanation: the algorithms were designed by humans, incentivised by capitalism to ensure maximum 'time on site' in order to sell eyeballs to advertisers and so make money. So this downward spiral of intentionally fragmenting human attention was created by humans in order to optimise the one metric that matters, the one essential quantification: 'line go up', share price increases, more net worth in offshore accounts. These were the conditions under which the algorithms were unleashed on an unsuspecting and unprepared global populace, and of course we are now beginning to reap that whirlwind.
This process is designed to strip mine human attention. Late-stage capitalism distilled to its purest essence: converting human psychology into shareholder value, as it has converted large swathes of the natural world before it. As a bonus, confused people with no coherent belief system are much easier to control, and to sell things to, as they fruitlessly search for the product which will end their isolation and sense of meaninglessness. The terminally confused also need to distract themselves by plugging themselves into the network over and over again, in the hope of some sort of release, like a fly repeatedly banging its head against the window pane, unable to comprehend why it can't escape.
Fragmentation and polarisation is not a side effect, it's the business model, and those who do it the best are the ones who win this zero-sum game, a game we might call 'Quantification vs Humanity: The Final Showdown'. We are ourselves, finally, the resource being extracted.
We the colonisers have colonised ourselves by this point, the logical conclusion of all the empire building since 1492 and all that. Capitalism doesn't just commodify labour anymore. It commodifies consciousness itself.
So, enough of the bleak overview. What could come after the commodification of consciousness? Is this necessarily the final denouement of 'late stage capitalism', when there is literally nothing left to colonise except ourselves? And if it is, does that maybe open a tiny crack through which something new might sneak through?
The solution - and there is a solution, whether we choose to accept it or not - is to treat consciousness as a commons, in much the same way that human beings have often treated water as a commons in our history, or grazing land, or fruit trees, or any other shared resource. This is the infinite game, the game that allows us to go on playing the game. Not the death cult that is currently running (down) the world.
We are addicts, and we need to recognise that we have been intentionally addicted by Very Bad People, many of whose names we actually know. This is not a metaphor, we are actually addicted to the output of the algorithm, to looking at our own reflection in their magic mirrors. So like any addict, we have to recognise the fact, and take steps to change things.
We have become isolated, atomised, so we need to recreate community. We have become polarised, yet afraid of conflict. We need to step back into embracing disagreement without feeling that our identity is somehow threatened as a result. We expect everything instantly and easily, so we need to re-embrace friction and difficulty. This all sounds terrible, right? That's because the addict is running the show now, your show, my show.
The solution is to prioritise depth over volume, quality over quantity. We don't need to become hippies, gambolling in the dirt on acid (although that sounds more fun than working in an office tbh). But while obviously we have no choice but to take care of business for some of each day, our off hours might be better spent reading an actual book than scrolling. Reclaiming our attention rather than pissing it away on something designed to addict us.
Maybe we can allow ourselves not to 'keep up', maybe #fallingbehind could actually become a positive thing. Let's face it, where has all that clout-chasing got us? Literally nowhere, unless you're in the top 0.01% of something.
I get that this is a bit of a rant, and short on actual detailed proposed solutions. But those are coming, plans are being drawn up, by me and by others. Watch this space.
cover photo is by Inspa Makers on Unsplash