Video Killed the Radio Star & Algorithms Killed Serendipity
Don't be a hapless servant of the algorithms. Instead, become an agent of serendipity
Hello Searchers!
I’ve always been a browser. Growing up, I haunted the stacks at the library. As a teen, I spent hours studying the walls and racks of tapes and CDs at the local music shop. I still love to wander the aisles of stores, even when I have something specific to buy.
The best part of browsing is discovering a secret something made just for you. I first found A Wrinkle in Time and The Book of Three on agendaless forays into the library labyrinth. Madeline L’Engle and Lloyd Alexander became my two favorite authors in elementary school. They triggered a lifelong obsession with fantasy, science fiction, and the blending of the sacred and the profane.
I first connected with the Soup Dragons when I heard one of their songs on a movie preview on a VHS tape. I paused the tape at the end of the preview and read the mini-credits to see who the band was that was playing an amazing cover of the Rolling Stones's song I’m Free.
The internet was supposed to make it easier for these happy accidents to happen—and it did for a while.
However, today’s internet is ruled by algorithms optimized for cash instead of wonder. Amazon gives you the search results it thinks will make you most likely to buy, not what most closely matches what you’re looking for. Often, you can type the exact book title and author name into Amazon and not find what you want on the first screen of results.
Social media is designed to keep you and your attention on the platform so you can watch more ads.
Even the mighty Google’s algorithm is subservient to ad tech.
Every ad online claims to be targeted. Targeted at what? You see ads for products and services that the algorithm thinks you want.
But ad targeting technology is not very effective. Amazon recommends sequels to books I did not finish, and Google has been sending me mattress ads at least once a week for years. I mean, eventually, I will buy another mattress. Twitter is convinced I’m one step away from buying into crypto, and those ads started when I posted a link to a podcast about why crypto is not economically sound.
I love seeing reading lists and playlists from my friends. Of course, with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, I only ever see a fraction of the posts I want to see from people I care about.
Algorithms interfere with the curation of your own feed.
Even though we access the web through browsers, online browsing is a horrible experience!
For more than a hundred years brick and mortar retail stores have experimented with different store layouts to increase sales. Online stores do the same thing. However, in a physical store, you can still browse all the aisles and shelves.
It’s impossible to have a genuine browsing experience on most ecommerce sites.
Online merchandising is almost all done via algorithm.
Indie stores of all shapes and sizes are the best bets for serendipity, but there are few physical ones left, and most are still not running easy-to-access online stores.
But I haven’t abandoned all hope. The web is changing, and the future of indie creators is still online.
Human curation is one of the best ways to discover cool new stuff, and platforms like Substack make it easier for you to curate a collection of people with good taste who help you find hidden treasures of knowledge and experiences.
That connection has always been the promise of the internet—a promise that Web 2.0 and its social networks broke. I’m extremely skeptical of all the hype around Web 3.0. I don’t believe the future is blockchain or the metaverse.
I think we are at a tipping point. We are either going to retake the internet for small, niche communities, or it is going to turn into a series of walled gardens ruled by billionaires and authoritarian regimes like China and Russia.
What can we do to make the internet weird again? We can continue to build relationships.
Almost all of the growth of this newsletter over the past several months has come from your recommendations to your friends and readers. Nobody is searching haiku comics and finding this little publication. I’m incredibly grateful that you trust me enough to share and recommend my work.
This is a small example of how independent creatives will improve the economics of the online art scene in the future. We will stop being used by the big platforms as content fodder and instead will create true communities—ones not run by ads. Instead of being hapless servants of algorithms, we will be agents of serendipity—sharing our passions with flesh and blood people we may never physically meet and showing them where they can buy from us directly.
Creative Challenge: What can you do to be an agent of serendipity? I’m going to start sharing my reading and listening list once a month in this newsletter.
Thanks for reading!
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
Cheers,
Jason
This edition’s haiku is stunning, in both verse and art. Reminds me of the tissue paper collages I made with my mom as a little girl.
I could not agree more with your take on algo’s and the web. Hurrah, substack. Hurrah, Weirdo Poetry.