The death of random information

You miss out when scrolling

Somehow I was convinced that if I didn’t wear Sambas I would die. Somehow I've gotten the idea that owning a pair of red ballerinas is a must for this summer and that without them my entire wardrobe would fall apart. Somehow using the Charlotte Tilbury Flawless Filter is a revolutionary experience everyone needs to live through.

And somehow, none of this is actually true.

Because, in reality, no one is wearing Sambas or red ballerinas. People still wear skinny jeans, even though they ‘aren’t supposed to’, and the Charlotte Tilbury counter at the store is collecting dust because barely anyone is buying it.

When I close TikTok and step into the real world, I consistently experience culture shock. A shock at how different the online world is from reality.

And while I do live in a small-ish town in Germany, where many could make the argument that the trends are simply not reaching us, most people would consider this town the suburbs of Hamburg, a large metropolitan city where you’d expect people wearing Sambas, wide-legged jeans, and follow all the online trends. And while people do follow them, they stand out like a sore thumb, literally screaming to the world: I am chronically online.

Unsplash, by Bruno Guerrero

When I wrote ‘I am tired of scrolling’ I did not expect so many people to resonate with it. Being online so often (sometimes for pleasure, sometimes because work makes me), I thought I was alone in this. People still post online, so social media must be used and liked by most, right? Well, I was wrong, because even now, weeks after the essay first went online, people still like and share it, all telling their stories about how much they hate social media these days, and how much it has changed. And all of your comments have made me think about just how weird social media actually is, and sadly, how much power we tend to give it.

One of the most shared quotes of the essay is this:

Somehow, influencing stripped away the diversity of fashion. Social media used to be this diverse place, full of inspiration. It was a place to experiment, now it is all very formulaic. No individuality required.

As it often happens with my writing, after I hit publish, I start to think about all the things I didn’t say. It made me think how the lack of diversity and the sameness of social media goes beyond making us look all the same. It doesn’t stop with our wardrobe. Social media literally influences what to wear, what books to read, what shows and movies to watch, what recipes to try, and sadly, what to believe and not to believe in.

The reason fashion is such an easy example, however, is because everyone can observe this in their day-to-day lives. Trying to figure out what people believe in is a much trickier question to answer than to do some people-watching. But if you look around and barely see anyone following online fashion trends, wouldn’t it be safe to assume that this applies to all the other trends too? That would mean that not everyone is reading ACOTAR or watching the latest Netflix documentary. Maybe some are, but many people also are not. I, for example, started ACOTAR and DNFd it in the middle of book three because I simply couldn’t be bothered anymore, I was bored by the entire story.

And if I now personally offended you with my opinion on one of BookTok’s most famous book series, I am not sorry. Somehow individuality has become something so threatening that we immediately must defend our sameness to everyone who is stepping out of line. Being bombarded with all this sameness on social media has made us uncomfortable with being different. All of a sudden we turn into teenagers again, afraid of being called and left out for not being cool. And instead of standing up for ourselves, we desperately try to follow every new rule that is made and become clones of people we’ve never met in real life.

We are no longer simply following the algorithm; we have become the algorithm.

And we are dying defending it.

The entire situation has become so dire, that even the Surgeon General of the U.S. is saying that social media is not as safe and harmless as people believe.¹ It is not surprising therefore that it has become a real effort for many of us to be our true selves. Constantly scrolling has made us forget who we are outside of the algorithm, and finding ourselves again is something we actively have to learn how to do now. It is no longer an instinctual behavior to be yourself, as social media has made it more natural to be a follower than to be an individual. But to be an individual outside of social media, you must be able to see something from different sides, and be able to hold two different beliefs at once - something that is not within the algorithm’s capabilities, as it is incapable of presenting us with well-balanced information from different perspectives. The algorithm quite literally forces us to be one-dimensional.

We are told that not being on social media will make us miss out on things. I am saying that it is the exact opposite: Being on social media too much will make us miss out on life.

The almighty algorithm

It has become more normal to follow people you’ve never met than it is to follow your own instincts, and as a result, it has become a risk to be different and to consume something that doesn’t match the algorithm. And it isn’t just a risk; it has become an intense effort to seek out random information, whereas it used to be something that you were presented with - you guessed it - at random.

What do you do in a doctor’s waiting room, while standing in line somewhere, or when taking the subway? You scroll on your phone. Some might read a book, others a magazine. Another person might listen to a podcast or music.

The one thing all of these things have in common: they are controlled by algorithms.

Not all of it and not all the time, but chances are, most of the content you consume has been curated for you. While that has its perks and clearly makes consuming content very comfortable, the algorithm doesn’t challenge you to grow. You actively have to decide to grow to make the algorithm change. Random information, however, triggers you to think about something you never would have thought about before. Flipping through the pages of a magazine exposed you to tons of random information you wouldn't have learned otherwise. Similarly, cable TV exposed you to random documentaries on topics you never even considered.

Random information allows you to grow. An algorithm wants to keep you where you are.

Social media used to present you with random information ‘back in the day’ (it makes me cringe how often I say this these days). Algorithms weren’t always as tailored as they are now. The Instagram Explorer page used to give you random information, and your Twitter feed too. Not to mention all the offline information you were presented with was fully separate from the online world. Every company was pushing its own agenda, completely at mercy of its own customer data. Today, the social media algorithm decides what book sells, and what book doesn’t. What movie will meet the box office hit requirements, and what movie will win the Golden Raspberry.

A lot of people might say now that this isn’t bad, because algorithms are driven by people’s choices and therefore represent people’s taste. True, but what does it do to us when everything we consume is driven by a collective trend bubble? There are different trend bubbles, sure. But do me a favor and pay very close attention to the amount of shelf space certain genres get in a bookstore today. Young adult and romance shelves have doubled in size, there is a dedicated BookTok shelf that didn’t exist before, and the literary fiction space looks like a TikTok for you page.

None of this is bad. But it isn’t good either. Because trends didn’t used to come from only one place. There were subcultures that drove trends and made a bookstore a very diverse space. Same for cable TV and magazines where trends were more diverse, and documentary topics were random and not all true crime. Today, to be seen at all (and to increase shareholder value), companies have no choice but to succumb to the social media trend bubbles. Stepping outside of it is deemed too risky because the ‘data shows what people want’. Translation: the collective algorithm decides what we consume. In the end, the algorithms today are designed to generate maximum profit, and designed to distort our reality to create a need to buy something.

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Sidenotes:

• This BBC bitesize-article does a really good job explaining ‘filter-bubbles’ and ‘echo-chambers’.

• If you think that our social media algorithms are the way they are and cannot be changed, you are wrong. Because smart algorithms designed to burst out of your bubble exist, but they are not designed to generate maximum profit, which is why no one is using them.

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‘We are in control, we are the algorithm, and decide what we watch’. But are we really? It takes a lot of effort to step out of your algorithm and find random information online. The fact that we have to actively look for random information is a problem in and of itself, as it is something that used to find us and not the other way around.

Considering how much of our knowledge we gain from online content, it is a bit concerning how easy it is to get stuck in the vortex of the algorithm. Because once you find some random information, the algorithm changes and adapts, and voilà, you are trapped in a new trend bubble, having to escape yet again to grow and learn.

On top of the algorithm, there’s too much damn content (written by

Stephen Moore

). And in my opinion, there is also too much bad content out there. Ever since social media companies decided to focus on engagement metrics as their main KPI for growth and profit maximization, the content machine has gone into overdrive. But good content takes time, something social media doesn’t care about. All they care about is content, content, content, all day, every day - no matter the quality.

And the problem with too much content is that it is very easy to go into an ‘overwhelmed freeze-response’ that either stops you from consuming anything at all or makes you stick to content that you already know. I have nothing against a good Twilight re-watch, but in order to grow and learn, we need to consume new things. We shouldn't have to retreat to the comfort of our favorite movies to survive this content overload. No wonder many people decide to stay in their comfortable algorithmic bubbles.

Embrace the joy of ‘missing out’

Coming to the realization that all the trends I saw and thought I had to follow were only trends online and not offline, I started to enjoy myself and my life so much more. Once I freed myself of the aesthetic I started to be me again.

I started writing again and started reading the books I used to enjoy but no one on BookTok ever recommends. My wardrobe no longer resembles a war zone that I have to fight my way through, clothes do what they are supposed to do now: they dress me, keep me warm, and make me feel comfortable.

And there are many other things I started to escape the algorithm. I buy a newspaper on Sundays, an actual printed one, to learn more about the happenings of the world. Whenever I feel like reading, I go to the bookstore without looking for books online first. I let the bookstore decide what to read, not Goodreads or BookTok (though the books I find there are probably there because of the algorithm). At least in a bookstore, there's a chance I might find something random. The library also has become a new favorite place, finding treasures of books that the algorithm hasn’t even touched. Substack too, to a degree, has allowed me to find random information. Clicking through the different categories under ‘search’ allows me to find things I normally would not look for, and therefore broadens my horizon in ways the social media algorithms never could. I also discovered random documentary generators (for Netflix and others) that have provided some treasures I never would have seen otherwise.

It is possible to escape the algorithm, but it does take some effort and willpower to do so. The algorithmic trend bubble is comfortable and easy, and leaving it will make you feel like you are ‘missing out’, but honestly, there is already too much content out there, so you will miss out on something anyway.

XOXO
Annika

1. Another good read about the effects of social media is Pandora Sykes’ interview recap with Jonathan Haidt, the author of the book The Anxious Generation:

On smartphones, teenagers and anxiety