Since I returned to live in my family home in Austin Texas in 2017 I have been sad to see the continuing disappearance of kinky "Keep Austin Weird" coffee shops, book stores, bars, and restaurants that have catered to the remnants of the slacker and hippie cultures of the 60s and 79s, as well as online Tech Bros. Instead we now have the monoculture of countless Starbucks and other chains pointed to by internet platforms that "curate" our options by pointing us to a bland uniformity of vendors whose shops and products are identical through the world.
Patrick Tanguay points to a piece by Matt Klein relevant to this process, "Beware the Curators," and passes on the following clip from his text:
Over the last decade, tech platforms have come to effectively dictate taste at scale, flattening culture by algorithmic means. Call it “The Age of Average,” “Filterworld,” “Algo Supremacy,” “Cultural Homogenization,” “Blanding,” “Refinement Culture” or “Cultural Moneyballism.” It’s all the same. […]
There’s an irony here: Algorithms were once believed to untether us from the masses and offer paths for personalization. But “For You” is not about pushing the limits of our artistic palates, but a device to serve us what the platform wants us to be satisfied with, herding us into perfectly predictable siloes that can be targeted with more “precise” recommendations. Anything other than this is a liability to the business model. […]
What we ultimately require – more than curators replacing algorithms – is the energy to explore, discover and share new works, and the self-confidence to develop independent taste... even if that means enjoying what no one else does, or enjoying exactly what everyone else does.