Read on Twitter
here's an expanded version of my post from a few weeks ago about TikTok's algorithm https://reallifemag.com/i-write-the-songs/
tech journalists tend to describe TikTok's algorithm as "secret sauce," an annoying and unhelpful metaphor that implies algorithmic sorting is added afterward to content
but when algorithms almost fully control distribution, they dictate the kind of content that gets made and the kinds of experiences users can have
algorithmic culture is inseparable from an insistence on novelty: it routinizes novelty so that users can manage the problem of how to be satisfied with never being satisfied (capitalism's demand for continual growth in consumer demand)
recommendation algorithms don't predict "what we really want"; they produce a particular kind of viewer/audience that wants to be recommended to—that feels recognized by the feed
I think the idea of "fun" is useful for describing that subject position: "fun" is the pleasure of wanting to consume on consumerism's terms; TikTok is a machine for producing that affect (what you watch is who you are)
(also think I could have written the whole thing as an analysis of that U2 song "Discotheque": a gimmicky song about falling for gimmicks, which tried to sound like "the future" but was just the sound of globalized capital)
