Is this thing still on?
Tentatively stepping back to the newsletter to wage a one-man-war on The Algorithm
Remember September, 2020? No? Maybe you, like me, have tried to block it out. It was a strange time. A time when some people, out of desperation and isolation mostly, started newsletters to feel some kind of connection with the outside world. It was a time when you, maybe feeling something similar, subscribed to just such a newsletter (like, this one).
Why am I dredging up this dreadful past? Well, because I’m here again—not desperate or isolated—but still feeling the need for connection and so, without making any promises as to what’s to come, I’m returning to this long-dormant newsletter. But I also want to acknowledge that 2020 was a crazy time when having another person’s thoughts delivered weekly in your email inbox sounded like a good idea and perhaps it no longer does so. If that is the case, I don’t blame you. I subscribed to a lot of newsletters in those days, and I’ve unsubscribed from nearly all of them.
This is a long way of saying, as I attempt to return to regular writing, if you no longer have any desire to read along, I won’t be offended. In fact, in our always-already-opted-in-world, I find that hitting “Unsubscribe” on unwanted emails is quite satisfying. So, go ahead: smash that unsubscribe button!
But, if you’re still with me, great! I’m not sure how frequently I’ll write (I’d love to say once a week; definitely not more than that). And I intend to keep each piece short. In terms of content, if you know me, you know my range of topics is pretty predictable, but maybe I’ll branch out? I have some ideas.
For now, here’s a kind of opening thought…
Last week, I was driving home from Gloucester when my daughter, Nelly, asked, “Dad, what’s one thing you think is wrong with the world?”
Friends, I have waited my whole life for someone to ask me this kind of question; Nelly never disappoints.
I started with climate change because, you know, existential crisis and all. We talked about it for a bit and then I asked why she was asking. At school, she said, they were told to think of a problem that they would like to solve and then to consider how they might go about doing so.
With that added information, I wanted to change my answer. Not that I don’t think climate change is important and, if not solvable, I guess, slow-down-able, but there’s another problem that’s been on my mind recently, and it’s one for which I have some ideas for solutions.
Polarization. I asked Nell if she’d ever heard that word; she said she hadn’t so I explained. By polarization I mean the way that people who disagree seem to find it increasingly difficult to find any common ground on which to discuss their disagreements.
Nelly is no stranger to my screeds against the internet and social media and algorithms, so she made that connection herself. Yes, I think that things like filter bubbles, which ensure we only ever see news and opinions we are primed to agree with, alongside the anonymity of the internet, have exacerbated polarization. Hot take, I know.
In terms of how to solve it, I shared something I’ve been thinking a lot about, that a potential solution to increasing polarization might be a move away from Silicon Valley-controlled corporate spaces and a return to the local—in our news, politics, and social lives. It’s difficult to demonize a person for their political views when they let you borrow a shovel. Suddenly, the issue you disagree about becomes one part of a multifaceted person, and not even the biggest part.
The promise of the internet—and later social media—was that it would bring the world closer, but we now know that it has, in fact, done the opposite. Rather than feeling like a celebrity or writer or politician you follow is as close as your dearest friend, your dearest friend may now feel as distant as a celebrity. Think about it, you scroll through Instagram or Facebook or the website formerly known as Twitter or, if there’s anyone young enough reading this, TikTok, and you see a mix of algorithmically-served content (everything is content now) selected for you to generate engagement. What that means is you may see fewer meaningful posts from people you actually know, unless, of course, they’ve managed to garner the attention of the algorithm (that is, your distant cousin who shares anti-vax conspiracy theories). You’re much more likely to see content from influencers who have learned how to game the system.
I just finished reading The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by New York Times international reporter Max Fisher, and I highly recommend it for the way it contextualizes our current social media moment. While Fisher notes that there are several opinions regarding how best to rein in the algorithms that power Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, and the like, he writes that “the longer that someone spends studying the platforms…the likelier they are to converge” on one answer: “turn it off.” This would roll the platforms back to the 2000s, he says, “when they simply displayed your friends’ posts by newest to oldest. No A.I. to swarm you with attention-maximizing content or route you down rabbit holes.”
What we are learning, I hope, is that there is no substitute for real, on-the-ground, in-person connection. Early 2000s social media wasn’t perfect, but it was at least an attempt to approximate real relationships in digital space. One of my colleagues who, like me, prefers in-person everything to the Zoom world we created post-Covid, likes to remind me that before we had Zoom School, we called it distance learning. And, he says, the name fit perfectly; it truly keeps people at a distance. I prefer my students—and my friends, family, and neighbors—near. To the extent that the internet brings us together (like maybe through writing and reading a newsletter), it’s a gift; but more often than not, it does the opposite.
I don’t know if Nelly will choose to tackle this problem for her school project. I tend to doubt it because, at this point, her world is local. She’s not online and she sees all her friends every day, in real life. But, as I reboot this newsletter, I think I might make this my project. Or, at least, one of them.