My Instagram feed is full of dogs. The algorithm knows that my wife sends me endless videos of animals, primarily dogs, and that I heart-emoji and lol-emoji all over these videos, so it shows me more. I try not to engage with the ones in my feed, otherwise I’d never see anything else, but it’s pretty useless at this point.
Don’t get me wrong, I love receiving these videos, which are mostly funny, always cute, occasionally gross, sometimes unexpected, like the video of the squirrel who leaves a cookie at the front door of the woman who always leaves food out for them. But. There are so many now, too many, so many that I never see content from accounts I actually follow. I have to keep scrolling to see anything different, anything new, which I suppose is the point of this algorithm.
The serendipity of aimless searching, the purposeless browsing, is becoming extinct. Everything has to have a purpose, an end goal, everything has to be curated to directly cater to our tastes, our interests. But if everything is narrowed down to the myopic view of just beyond our noses, we lose our curiosity. We lose interest in the unknown, the unexplored.
I don’t want an endless feed of only what interests me. I don’t want only dog videos, just like I don’t want to wear only black clothes. I dress according to my mood, just as I read the book that I am in the mood to read, as I eat the food I am in the mood to eat. I don’t want everything to be the same, to be endlessly pleasing, to be familiar and like the day before.
In Defense of Novelty
When I was at an antiracist facilitator training in the fall of last year, we broke off into small groups to practice what we’d been learning: hearing the themes beneath the stories we tell each other, the threads that weave our narratives together. Our exercise was to tell each other the story of a particularly high moment in our lives, a recent fond memory, and the listeners were to write down the themes of what we heard while still listening deeply.
I told the story of a surprise road trip I took to Marfa, Texas with my wife, how one day after work she told me to pack my bags and that we were going on an adventure. I didn’t know where we were going, only that we were taking a plane to get there. We flew to Texas, where we rented a car and drove from San Antonio to Marfa.
Marfa, home to a thriving artist colony and gourmet restaurants alongside hometown folks and dusty dives, was also the site of an influencer convention that weekend, overrun with Instagrammers and art installations. We’d had no idea this would be happening, and drove through town trying to find a room for the night. We ended up finding a room at an unironically 70s-era motel, where the proprietor complained about the young hipsters taking over the town, frolicking in the streets like it was their playground.
After I recounted this story to the two women in my small group, one of them shared what she had heard from my story, a theme that reflected who she thought I was: someone who liked novelty. I immediately felt seen. Yes.
I had never thought of myself as someone who liked novelty, but as soon as she said it, I knew it was, is, true. It must be the Aquarius in me, but I love the unexpected. The new, the different, even the strange, is thrilling to me. Routine is what anchors my life, but novelty is what keeps me going.
Merriam-Webster defines novelty as “something new or unusual” or “the quality or state of being novel : newness.” I marvel at what I haven’t seen or encountered before, and I delight in experiencing something new for the first time. This may sound like I get bored often, or take for granted what I am familiar with, but if anything, these moments of newness make me appreciate the old standbys even more.
We need both. The new and exciting, and the familiar and comforting. These algorithmic deductions of what we want to see are presumptuous and often incorrect. They might feed us new accounts, but the content offered is essentially the same. What truly invites engagement is the appeal of the new, the unexplored, the previously unseen, not what we have seen before.
By showing us facsimiles of what we have engaged with previously, these platforms dilute our interests to the point of disengagement. How many cat videos does a person need to see (a lot, I know)?
Aimless wandering, purposeless browsing, are hallmarks of human engagement. How many times have you fallen down a random Google rabbit hole after searching for something entirely unrelated? You may have begun with the question, How tall is Idris Elba? (6' 3", according to most sources), then you read an article and find out that he is also a DJ, and then suddenly you’re hours-deep in a YouTube listening binge of British DJs. There is nothing like an unexpected peruse that leads you down an unmarked path to somewhere you had never intended on going in the first place.
These platforms don’t want us to explore the unexplored because doing so takes our eyeballs away from their targeted ads, and because this aimless browsing makes us hard to pigeonhole. The unintended search keeps us curious about avenues and people and places that might not be what we want but could very well be what we need.
If we are in need of connection, we might not find it in the same old places. Those same old places are deteriorating, in need of repair, or require complete demolition. The traditions and structures of the past were never intended to serve us, and we can see clearly now that they never have. We must seek the new and the novel so we can dream of a future free of fear.
Social media platforms are designed to keep us fearful, keep us consuming, keep us engaging with what will inflame our senses; these platforms are also how we find each other. Not all of us are so lucky to have our people with us, in our neighborhoods or nearby towns. Many of us have to seek comradeship outside of our physical spheres, and social media has allowed us to do so in a global capacity. So, what do we do?
For me, it means engaging only occasionally and for short periods of time. I do not check Instagram every day, nor do I scroll for more than an hour when I am on the platform. This was not a conscious or intentional decision, it’s just that there are so many books to read and people to see, and I prefer the curation of the videos my wife sends me rather than the endless feed of similar videos. It’s funny; the very algorithm that is meant to keep me on has driven me off.
There are so many unknown paths to explore.
The Friday Finds
Action. Support the Food Bill of Rights to advocate for equitable food quality and access.
Listen. “Fire” by MAVICA. “Walking down the road / Places where you have grown.”
Watch. Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God. How far would you go to believe that someone has all the answers? How far would you go to believe in yourself? A harrowing exploration of the Mother God cult, this documentary is relentless in its pursuit of the truth. But what is the truth? And how did a young mom become a cult leader, only to wind up dead from completely preventable causes?
Read. Central Places by
. A debut novel by the Vanity Fair correspondent (and writer of the sharp and witty media industry newsletter ), Central Places follows a fateful week in the life of Audrey Zhou, a restless New Yorker visiting her hometown in Illinois for the first time since high school graduation. Poignant, funny, and wise, Cai captures the angst of growing up, getting older, and realizing that your dreams may not be what you really want after all.Thank you for being here. See you soon!
Emma