Kyle Chayka in The New Yorker puts a name to something I’ve felt for many years while attempting to navigate the pervasive recommendation machines of the internet: algorithmic anxiety. As he relays in the article:

“I’ve been on the internet for the last 10 years and I don’t know if I like what I like or what an algorithm wants me to like,” Peter wrote. She’d come to see social networks’ algorithmic recommendations as a kind of psychic intrusion, surreptitiously reshaping what she’s shown online and, thus, her understanding of her own inclinations and tastes. “I want things I truly like not what is being lowkey marketed to me,” her letter continued.

…

Peter’s dilemma brought to my mind a term that has been used, in recent years, to describe the modern Internet user’s feeling that she must constantly contend with machine estimations of her desires: algorithmic anxiety. Besieged by automated recommendations, we are left to guess exactly how they are influencing us, feeling in some moments misperceived or misled and in other moments clocked with eerie precision. At times, the computer sometimes seems more in control of our choices than we are.

Personally, this means being afraid to ever ‘dislike’ anything on Netflix or YouTube, with the fear that anything remotely related will now be banished forever from reaching me, or hesitating to like even the most enjoyable clips only to be inundated with identical clones. I’ve begun listening to mid-tempo synth music as background while working, and though I still prefer energetic indie rock, Spotify has now almost completely shifted its picture of my tastes toward retro paradise vibes. It’s now become a side job simply to manage a computer-generated picture of who I am and what interests me.

What are your strategies for optimizing how the machine will predict your tastes?

Are you doing a good job managing them? Are they delivering as a result?

What are the best examples of the algorithm nailing it for you, or totally missing the mark?

What are your alternative discovery methods to get out from the yoke of a digitally dictated taste profile?

All those moments will be lost in time… like tweets in rain.

There is a constant tension between our desire to live every day like it’s our last — to maximize our impact on this world and the joy we find in it — and our tendency to do the opposite, by frittering away precious time doing mundane, pointless, unfulfilling things. Well, there’s an app for that.

“Five times a day for the past three months, an app called WeCroak has been telling me I’m going to die. It does not mince words. It surprises me at unpredictable intervals, always with the same blunt message: “Don’t forget, you’re going to die.”

…

As I scroll through Instagram or refresh Twitter, WeCroak interrupts with the sobering reminder that it is not just my attention these other apps are consuming, but chunks of my life.”

The simplicity is beautiful, if potentially morbid. And don’t count out the fact that it may have the opposite effect on the more jaded among us, who find the comfort of an inevitable end a source of relief.

Would you get anything out of an app like this?

How might these reminders affect your daily behavior?

What other “tech” with such a clear and simple purpose do you wish existed?

This one may be kind of cheating, since a whole lot of potential answers are right here in this super cool/weird video. But as this only scratches the surface (and there have only been so many episodes of Black Mirror so far)…

What other potentially strange uses might result from everyone having AR or VR on a regular basis?

Which ones sound great, and which ones sound awful or terrifying?

At least constant headphone wearers can still look down on constant walk-and-texters.

I wear headphones constantly. At work, to tune out office noise. Almost 100% of public transportation or commute time. While running errands. I’m an avid podcast listener so it has to be done, only so many hours in the day.

Amanda Petrusich in The New Yorker asks if our personal audio bubbles are making us more antisocial:

Certainly, headphones are an obvious method of exercising autonomy, control—choosing what you’ll hear and when, rather than gamely enduring whatever the environment might inflict upon you. In that way, they are defensive; users insist upon privacy (you can’t hear what I hear, and I can’t hear you) in otherwise lawless and unpredictable spaces. Should we think of headphones, then, as just another emblem of catastrophic social decline, a tool that edges us even deeper into narcissism, solipsism, vast unsociability?

And then goes on to ask if the way we’re listening to music — mostly through headphones — is affecting the kind of music that’s made, or the way it’s made, but that question is way harder to address with evidence, and way less interesting on a personal level. So:

Are headphones making you more antisocial? How much or how often?

Is that a net positive or negative for society? What are the benefits or drawbacks?

The circle of (modern sedentary) life.

Occasionally you come across a trend or opinion piece to which the only appropriate reaction is, “Umm, I think that’s just you.” Getting to judge fancy writers for fabricating a societal trend out of personal experience can be fun and satisfying.

Here’s one: The Times Magazine, “Is Staying In the New Going Out?”.

In it, the author suggests that with all the great technology available to us, from on-demand entertainment to one-click food delivery to right-swipe dating…

…Food, entertainment, romance: The traditional weekend staples are now available entirely on demand. The centripetal force of our homes has never been stronger…

We have memes about staying in (“Netflix and chill”) and phrases like “binge watch,” which suggest pathologically homebound behavior. We no longer dismiss the urge to remain warm, hidden, fed, cushioned and entertained indoors as a lamentable womblike regression.

Though if we were to use actual data, one could reasonably assume that staying in vs going out is a function of some combination of:

1. Aging – having less energy, settling into a comfortable routine, having more obligations and therefore less free time.
2. Relationship status – Not being single, and therefore less pressured to go out to meet potential love interests, or even having a reliable social circle and seeking fewer new friends.
3. Temperament – Being the kind of person that was never that into going out in the first place, and therefore feeling less pressure to do so with each passing year just to impress others.
4. Financial situation – Not having a lot of money to spend on restaurants, shows, Uber/cab fare, bar-priced drinks, and so choosing to stay in out of necessity.

For any given person not still in college, the statement is probably true that “I go out less than I used to” or alternately “I go out less than I’d like to”. I’m just super skeptical that it’s directly related to the rise of mobile apps or streaming services. What do you think?

Do you go out less than you used to? Or less than you’d like to?

What are the reasons behind your growing urge (or tendency) to stay in?

If you feel bad about it? How might you combat it?
If you’re embracing it, why don’t you feel bad about it?