Three things for Friday, Jan. 19
Filterworld, throwing my vote away in the Republican primary, and a birthday to top it all off
Yesterday I bought the book Filterworld — How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka, and I’m really looking forward to getting into this one. Chayka was a guest on Ezra Klein’s podcast a few weeks back (link is here), and, at least as I understand his book, he’s writing about how algorithms and the “modern internet” (as distinguished from the internet of, say, 2014) have changed culture. We’ve moved from a world in which it was really possible to discover things for yourself — develop tastes, curate a sense of style, etc. — to one in which algorithms kind of just do all that for you. They do that for everyone and so we’re all beholden to this weird digital hive mind that we haven’t had to wrestle with before. Spotify knows what you want to listen to, and Instagram knows what things you’re likely to want to buy, and the internet is just a firehose of nonstop content that has been chosen for you based on what you and those like you are already doing and liking, and the end result is just a sad, over-optimized blandness to everything.
Or at least, that’s part of the argument, anyway. I’m excited to get into this book and see what Chayka has to say — first, because I’ll bite at any argument that says Spotify is an algorithmic soulless hellscape, and second, because I feel like I spent a good chunk of my 20s and early 30s developing mildly insufferable hispter tastes, and I’d like to read about why the cool kids can’t really do that anymore. That is to say, the process of developing niche, eccentric tastes has really morphed now and made it that much harder to figure out what’s actually “cool.” Is Taylor Swift “cool”? Are Marvel movies cool? They sure are popular! But something about the notion of personal, individual style and taste has been lost.
Two consistent sentiments I’ve encountered in the first couple weeks of 2024 are 1) the standard “Happy new year!” that’s always nice to say/hear when reuniting with people after the long holiday break; followed quickly by 2) “boy, 2024 sure is going to suck, isn’t it?”
I wish this wasn’t the case, but it’s almost impossible when looking ahead to the next 12 months, to not have a certain amount of dread over.. you know. The election and stuff. I try my damnedest not to talk politics on this blog. There are enough Atlantic and New Yorker articles in the world whipping people up into a frenzy over how awful/dangerous/unhinged Donald Trump is. I don’t need to offer my own takes about this, nor do I need to reflect on those articles and try to explain why I think reading them only makes it all worse. But I guess one thing I *do* find myself reflecting on is Nikki Haley. Specifically.. I think about whether I really ought to vote for Nikki Haley in the Illinois presidential primary on March 19.
There is only one job as a citizen in a democracy. It’s to make an informed vote. That’s it. You can donate money or time to support a candidate if you want, but that’s above and beyond. It’s voting. Voting is what matters. Posting doesn’t matter. Hand-wringing or obsessing or reading The Atlantic doesn’t matter. It’s votes. Defeating Donald Trump is a worthy objective, and voting for Nikki Haley furthers that objective. Even if it doesn’t succeed, cutting into his margin in the primary is something. It’s participation, and it’s participation that counts.
And yes, Trump is surely going to be the nominee of the party anyway, but.. does that really matter? The theory of voting is that it’s always important to vote! You don’t tell someone living in a deep red state or a deep blue state, “eh, just stay home, the result is predetermined and your vote won’t make a difference.” We don’t think like that when it comes to voting, because the act of voting is what makes us have a functioning participatory democracy. So like.. the Illinois Republican primary gives me a chance to vote against Donald Trump. Why would I pass that up??
Lastly, yesterday was my birthday, and I don’t really have any big thoughts on the subject, other than to say.. boy, mid-40s sure is like… not young. And I know everyone reflects on this.. how like, you get to your 40s and you don’t feel any different than what you felt in your 20s or 30s.. it’s still *me* just doing the things and living life — I didn’t morph into that other, older not-self that I carried around as an image in my head when I was younger — the Person Who Would Be 40 who I tried to picture, I never really intuited it would still be the self-same me, if that makes sense.
In some sense, I find myself wanting to cling to the Happiness U-Curve theory — this idea that life happiness just bottoms out when you hit your early 40s, and then it’s a steady climb from there on out. Supposedly this holds true for just about everyone — regardless of whether you have kids, or what part of the world you live in, or your economic circumstances. Your 40s are just rock bottom because you’re old enough to have lost the energy and excitement and discovery of youth, but you’re still the youngest, least experienced old person out there, so the general sense of wisdom and greater perspective hasn’t kicked in yet. Your 40s are just a slog, and it sucks.
I mean.. maybe. I guess? I don’t think I’m actually unhappy about any of the Big Things in my life right now, if I’m honest. But I am becoming less tolerant of my own anxieties and neuroses as I get older, and I’d like to think that the next couple of decades will give me a chance to overcome some of those. I’d like to stop torturing myself with my shortcomings and feelings of failure. But didn’t I have those in my 20s and 30s, too?? I dunno. There’s plenty of research that also says the U-Curve is nonsense, so maybe there’s nothing really here to fret over.
Happy Birthday! I'll just... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7347230/