Dear algorithm
There is something inherently godlike about them
Since the middle of the month, give or take, “Dear Algorithm” posts have overrun my otherwise eclectic “for you” feed on Threads. They’ve become the one constant in a content buffet controlled by a fickle, unfeeling algorithm.
Dear algorithm, the posts always begin. Please connect me with…
And then the posters list the topics or the people they’d like to encounter, from horse girls and booking agents to first-time moms and parrot lovers and gardeners.
Some people seem to think this meme literally works — that appealing to the algorithm triggers some kind of setting that tweaks the contents of their feeds. Others are predictably using the template to advertise their own hustles and identities.
Many seem to operate in an unironic middle ground: They’re trying to make Threads work for them, maybe, but they’re having a hard time finding their people. The app famously eschews lists and hashtags and many of the other tools you might use to navigate a still-newish platform.
But maybe if I wish for people who like books, someone searching Threads for books (... or horse girls or parrots) might actually chance upon my account. In fact, there are plenty of testimonials from Threads supplicants who say the trick yielded new followers.
I love watching people contort platforms into the spaces they need and want — it feels very early Twitter. Very democratic. But these posts also strike me for two other reasons.
First: Users joined Threads to escape older platforms that had, essentially, gone to hell. Those platforms collapsed in large part because they ran off targeted advertising models that value “engagement” above all else.
But “Dear Algorithm” posts often adopt the marketing logic of targeted ads — if not their actual economics. Some literally read like a highly niche list of online audience segments.
On sites like Facebook and Twitter, targeted ad systems harvest your data and infer specific personal characteristics, reducing you to a list of overlapping categories that marketers can tick off in some back-end campaign manager. Ironically, “Dear Algorithm” posts do much the same thing, decomposing both the poster and her preferred followers into a series of demographics and consumer preferences.
The second thing that stands out to me is the tone of these posts. The most sincere ones feel almost spiritual. These users are quite literally appealing to a higher power with little hope it will hear or grant their wishes.
Some sound like letters to Santa. Others read like prayers to God. I guess there is something inherently godlike about these algorithms, in that they are unknowable but know you completely … at least if they’re any good.
The Threads’ algorithm, for its part, seems pretty middling. Good algorithms don’t require memes like this. And recently, I’ve also seen another permutation:
A brief programming note
Writing about anything besides what’s going on in Israel and Gaza continues to feel a bit glib to me. I literally spent 20 minutes debating where to place this note. But I think there’s a virtue in deferring to other people on this one … and I think even in the midst of terrible tragedy, there’s a need for levity and writing on other subjects.
Here are some things I read about the violence, and would recommend, this week: “Doomsday Diaries,” by Sarah Aziza for The Baffler; “The Compass of Mourning,” by Judith Butler for the London Review of Books; “Have We Learned Nothing?,” by David Klion for n+1;“In the Israeli-Palestinian Debate, You Might Be Wrong. So Be Humble,” by Shadi Hamid for The Washington Post; and “A Timeline of Israel and Palestine’s Complicated History,” by Nicole Narea for Vox.
Last week’s newsletter also discussed a mysterious Telegram channel, called South First Responders, that surfaced much of the initial footage the world saw of the October 7 massacre. A reader wrote in to point out that limited internet connectivity in Gaza could prevent Palestinians from maintaining a similar channel.
“How do you think this will skew the world's understanding of the mounting death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza?” they wrote. It’s a good question. For more on this, see Insider: “As internet connectivity plummets in Gaza, ordinary Palestinians struggle to compete with Israel's narrative of the war.”
If you read anything else this weekend
“How to Fix the Internet,” by Katie Notopoulos for MIT Technology Review. Amidst all the recent eulogies for the social web, I appreciated this hopeful (… if not completely convincing) departure: Maybe this is the moment we’ll all revert back to smaller, gentler online communities and less extractive business models. “My toxic trait is I can’t shake that naïve optimism of the early internet. Mistakes were made, a lot of things went sideways … The mistake now would be not to learn from them.”
“Inside a TikTok Talent Factory for Misfit Stars,” by Brendan I. Koerner for Wired. This is just a riotous profile, from its very opening scene: “We were on the patio of a middling Los Angeles taqueria when Ursus Magana tried to talk me out of writing this story.” Magana, a “fairly reliable rainmaker,” plucks weird punks and potheads from obscurity and turns them into TikTok stars. 10/10, would absolutely watch a reality show about 25/7 Media.
“AI Is About to Photoshop Your Memories,” by Charlie Warzel for The Atlantic. Also: “None of Your Photos Are Real,” by Jason Parham for Wired, and “Real Images,” in Rob Horning’s Internal Exile. In case you’re in the mood to spend some time wondering what reality even is, I highly recommend consuming these three essays together — all re: those ubiquitous Google Pixel 8 advertisements.
“The Landlords of Social Media Seem Happy to Play the Villain,” by Michael Friedrich for The New York Times Magazine. What benefit do apparently wealthy, successful people derive from bragging about all the single moms they’ve evicted? Maybe it’s self-caricature in pursuit of clout … or maybe it’s a distillation of how bad and reductive our housing debates have gotten.
“Real Play,” by Devon Brody for The Paris Review. There was a trio of really lovely gaming essays in The Paris Review last week, and it would seem the ~curatorial class~ liked this one on Red Dead Redemption best. But I loved this little essay about The Sims and the expectations we have for our lives, few of which play out (heh) in quite the way we planned.
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from last week’s newsletter was this essay on Taylor Swift’s Eras tour.
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Postscripts
Millennials enter middle age. Discord takes on its teenage trolls. LinkedIn continues to get weirder and TikTok-hyped Halloween shit is out of control. The memeification of Hunter Biden. The view from Mechanical Turk. Two clever games, one similar premise: Could *you* do a tech reporter's or a trust & safety team’s work?
How romance novel covers have changed over time. How one messy meme page became a hub for news. Teledriving. The “Ozempic effect.” Photogenicity can be learned. In the future everyone will own one item of clothing and “tourists [will get] pregnant in space.” How the Epoch Times went mainstream. When conservatives come for the Bluey meme page.
AI agents will make life easier (… but also probably replace you). I actually missed the part where “stomp clap hey” music got uncool. The rise of biometric check-ins. The failure of grocery-store self checkouts. Last but not least: The Eras tour as economic stimulus.
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards.
— Caitlin