Revenge of the lurkers
Werewolf erotica, algorithmic anxiety, sign language, subtitles, PrisonTok, surreal AI foods and the Instagram feed drama
More than 260,000 people have signed a week-old Change.org petition aimed at Instagram, the one-time photo-sharing app now mimicking TikTok as closely as copyright law allows it. Personally, I used to like Instagram for stalking the weddings of distant acquaintances and stockpiling local brunch suggestions. Now every fifth post is a recommended “reel” from some live-laugh-love creatrix whose cleaning hacks and healthy cooking tips could not be less relevant to my interests.
“We just want to see when our friends post” (!!!!), in the words of the petition.
But my friends aren’t posting anymore, and yours probably aren’t either. In a Twitter exchange with Chrissy Teigan, of all people, Instagram head Adam Mosseri explained the TikTokification of Instagram in terms of user behavior. Most people now interact with their friends through direct messages or stories, he said; on both Instagram and Facebook, fewer and fewer users still post new personal content to the feed.
In other words, after more than a decade of Web 2.0 bliss, everyone has gone back to … lurking.
“Lurking” is a word with a deep and intriguing history in digital life, dating back to the days of Usenet and BBS message boards. Historically, it’s not been a complimentary term: People who hang out in online communities, but don’t contribute to them, have long been cast as creeps or free-riders. The advent of social media introduced a new participation imperative: Because social networks needed their users to create content to sell ads against, they introduced all kinds of little psychological nudges to lure people out of the audience and onto the stage. (See, for instance, the “like” button.)
But most people in most communities actually prefer to lurk, an observation so consistent that it’s been codified as “the 1%” or “the 90-9-1” rule. Writing in 1996, well before Instagram, the Danish researcher Jakob Nielsen theorized that within each online community, 1% of users post most content, 9% contribute on and off, and 90% just hang out and read/watch shit. People like to quibble over the exact ratios, but surveys since then have shown the concept is basically sound: On Twitter, for instance, one quarter of users post 97% of the site’s content. On TikTok, only about half of surveyed users in one 2018 report said they posted videos of their own.
Unlike Instagram and Facebook, however, TikTok actively rewards lurkers — you don’t even have to create an account before the app serves you a flood of content. Its algorithms also prize passive signals like watch time pretty highly, removing the need to participate via mechanisms such as follows, likes, saves or comments.
Instagram and Facebook are now updating to cater to lurkers, too; or maybe more accurately, they’re backtracking from the efforts they launched to coax users out of their lurker states over a decade ago. On tk, acknowledging the abruptness of that shift, Mosseri said the company would reduce the amount of recommended posts and videos in the Instagram feed while the company tunes its recommendation algorithms.
But the pause is temporary; during a Wednesday earnings call, in which Meta also announced its first-ever revenue drop, Mark Zuckerberg said both the Facebook and Instagram feeds would double down on recommended content in the future. And if you think that’s bad, just wait for what comes next: After personalized AI-recommended content, Facebook’s former VP of product tweeted this week, comes personalized AI-generated content. It’s a lurkers’ web and we’re just whining about it.
P.S. Sorry for my unexpected absence the last few weeks — it’s been a busy month. It also turns out I’m not SUPER motivated to pull newsletter all-nighters when its 80 degrees and beautiful. I’m working on a better workflow, though!
If you read anything this weekend
“Werewolf Erotica is the Latest Global Gig Work Trend,” by Viola Zhou and Meaghan Tobin in Rest of World. I’ve got two links on the future of books this week, and both of them are FINE, totally fine, I’m sure. First-up: this peek into the global market for serialized, cookie-cutter fiction with themes like “werewolf and the mafia” and “werewolf and CEO” (?!), which writers churn out for a couple dollars. Second: “The Crypto Revolution Wants to Reimagine Books,” apparently by … turning them into investment vehicles.
“The Age of Algorithmic Anxiety,” by Kyle Chayka in The New Yorker. Algorithms recommend not only which strangers we see on Instagram, but also what we order on Grubhuh, where we go on Google Maps — even how we finish our emailed sentences. How many of our preferences are really “ours,” anymore? (And who has the mental bandwidth to get that existential?)
“How a Visual Language Evolves as Our World Does,” by Amanda Morris in the New York Times. I could have read about 2,000 more words of this, on how sign language is changing to accommodate video screens, slang and other new cultural norms. Added bonus: cool little looping animations!
“Welcome to Alphaland, the Disney World for Bodybuilders,” by Emily McCullar in Texas Monthly. “Disney World” feels like an insufficient metaphor here: Imagine a theme park crossed with a hype house and then populated with wannabe fitness influencers.
“How Generation Z Became Obsessed with Subtitles,” by Guy Kelly in The Telegraph. By some measures, 80% of adults aged 18 to 25 watch TV with the subtitles on, a fascinating statistic that apparently has nothing to do with years of loud volumes and AirPods.
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from the last newsletter concerned the personality-quiz app Dimension.
The classifieds
Good for U (?) is a lighthearted podcast about capitalism-critical consumerism in the wellness industry. Each week, we discuss what's haunting our carts, the trends we can't escape, which sexy unique scams to avoid, and our (loosely held) strong opinions. Listen here.
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Postscripts
PrisonTok. Surreal AI foods. Emo Week at The Ringer. In praise of online fertility groups and weird Spotify covers. Can you ever have too many emoji? Does Dall-E rip off real artists? Can Amazon’s fake reviews be stopped? (On all counts: idk, I doubt it.)
Why Twitter hasn’t torpedoed trends and creators have adopted Discords. Meet the people who man the cloud and the ones behind virtual influencers. Don’t tag the author. Don’t bet on TikTok. Truth Social: not “nice,” but also “not interesting.” Last but not least, Links endorses TikTok househusbands (… at least this guy) and hybrid emoji.
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards.
— Caitlin
P.S. Thanks to Alex and Leah for the great link suggestions! Reminder that you can submit *your* favorite articles and tweets for next week’s edition.