#65 - What is Algorithmic Dissonance?
Feed Me Something Better; Herbivore Marketing; Poem: Consider This Idea; Time Machine
Hello, my friends,
I have had a mild throat ache for the past two weeks and I woke up yesterday and it was gone! Was time the medicine? Or maybe I ate something curative. I don’t know, but I’m glad to be free of this irritating pain and can go back to training for my 5K. Perhaps related to my throat is that I’ve been way more tired lately — waking up cranky and spending every evening in a blur of fatigue. And yet, Wednesday morning saw me in a better mood, even though per usual Sophie woke me up 30 minutes before my alarm. Yesterday, my morning outlook was also better. Have I overcome a malaise related to an undercover illness? Taking Auden’s famous villanelle out of context: If I could tell you I would let you know.
Feed Me Something Better
If it weren’t for a few group that I enjoy, I would quit Facebook immediately. The feed, which used to be the platforms main attraction, has become a garbled mess. In an ideal world, it would revert to its original incarnation which was to show me the posts of my friends in the order they were posted from the moment I last logged in with no additions or alterations — simple and straightforward. Instead, the algorithmic mess I see every time I access Facebook (and Instagram) mixes up the sequence of the posts in unintelligible ways, serves me posts from a tiny subset of friends, shows completely random ads, and over the past year or two, has begun to include posts from groups and pages that I don’t follow at all and have never heard of. Opening up my phone just now, here is my feed represented in exact order:
Meme shared by a friend
Ad from Easter Sierra Observatory (located 260 miles from my home)
People You May Know (with a mix of people I do know but choose not to friend on FB and totally random people)
Image of Robin Williams from some account called “Uplifting Journeys” (never heard of it)
Ad from Magnum Photos
Meme shared by a different friend
Reels (tiktok on Facebook)
Ad from PetSmart (I do not have any pets)
Prank video from an account called “Getti” (never heard of it)
Post from Descanso Gardens (relevant since we’re members, but I do not follow the page since I already get their emails)
Ad for Ace of Swords Publishing
What the heck is going on here? In the first 11 posts of my feed, there are four ads, three posts from pages I don’t follow, two Facebook features I don’t need, and two low-quality posts from acquaintances. I have 785 friends on Facebook, what is this algorithmic dissonance I’m being force-fed?
I’d like to say that this is the worst, but LinkedIn’s baffling feed, with its mix of celebrations, corp-speak, and very personal confessions from complete strangers (friends of friends? Friends of friends of friends? Who knows?) is as alienating as it is disturbing. Every time I open LinkedIn, I prepare myself for feelings of confusion and mild disgust — a similar mental nausea I feel when I hear the stilted rhythms of local newsreaders awkwardly joking about some nonsense story.
Maybe someone could create a Facebook app that blocks everything but my groups. I’d pay a few bucks to avoid exposing myself to the rest of that visual garbage.
Herbivore Marketing
While I’ve been various shades of vegetarian in the past, I have never understood the appeal of meat (or any food) analogues. I mean, if you’re on a plant-based diet just embrace it — you don’t eat burgers and there’s nothing wrong with that. Why would it be appealing to call a squashed puck o’ bean a burger or a piece of grilled seitan chicken? Despite Impossible patties and other meat and cheese substitutes being delicious, the lie is off-putting.
Recently, I was at an event for work and across from our booth was a vegan food truck where everything on the menu besides the french fries and drinks was a vegan simulacra of American fast food. I ordered a bacon cheese burger (read: Not a bacon cheese burger) out of curiosity and it tasted fine. But it got me thinking again, why do we do this? And, of course, the answer is marketing.
Humans are so stubbornly creatures of categories that many would rather accept an obvious falsehood than call what they’re eating cultured cashew paste (instead of vegan “cheese”). This is the thing Seth Godin was talking about in his book “All Marketers Are LiarsTell Stories” (#51) except his frequent example was of expensive wine glasses that were believed to upscaled an oenophile’s experience (truth: Glassware doesn’t make wine taste better, even if it’s obtained at premium prices). But before even considering the psychological maneuver of categorization, I have to say that calling a bean patty between two buns a burger is easier than coming up with a new name for this bean sandwich that only I would understand. Categorizing foods makes communicating about them easier. Same with vegan cheese.
Realistically, and here is the marketing angle — it also makes a “plant-based” diet (note: I didn’t say vegan) more approachable for the average person. We know what beef, chicken, pork, steak are. They are the protein part of our plate. It seems like a sacrifice to replace that part with legumes, doesn’t it? Legumes belong next to the meat. But if you simply call it an “impossible” or “beyond” burger and make it look like meat, and even bleed its own vegan blood, we can easily say: Yo brain, file this as meat and tell the waiter to put it next to our mashed potatoes.
These kind of shortcuts are not uncommon in experience of life — think of a Hollywood pitch. You write the script for a hard-driving detective film: “It’s like Maltese Falcon for the Fast and the Furious generation!” Or a biopic about the rollicking life story of a neuro-divergent cybersecurity researcher, “Imagine if Forrest Gump, Beautiful Mind, and The Imitation Game had a threesome!” Thankfully, I’m not a screenwriter. Still, the point is clear: Categories not only make our life easier, but they also define our very reality. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t refer to the ooze squeezed from oats as oat “milk”.
Poem: Consider This Idea
Consciousness might be like spotting a silverfish inside a cardboard box. Originally, it might have held a dishwasher or a television -- the box, not the silverfish. It's clearly an old box. And that silverfish, probably old too... They live for years! You go get a cup to trap it, but, by the time you return it's gone.
Time Machine
Here’s what I wrote in HMF a year ago (in issue #12):
A Curiosity Problem: An honest piece about the challenge of my roving mind.
Enter the Are.na: Extolling the benefits of “slowcial” media platform Are.na.
Yes, I Watched Sanctuary: A short review of the Netflix sumo series, Sanctuary.
Interestingly, today I today I wrote about torturous social media platforms that are the opposite of Are.na. Also, related to Sanctuary, we are currently in the midst of the May sumo tournament (which I didn’t write about. You’re welcome.).
I agree on all counts, including the idea of why are foods marketed as substitutes, rather than good on their own merit?
'...the ooze squeezed from oats...' - Somehow that brief description merits its own entire category of disgustingness. The alliteration is magical. I'm feeling nausea.