#9 The Algorithm
Accuracies and anomalies 👨💻
In the current digital landscape, it’s oft remarked that if the service is free, you are the product. A largely unregulated wild west is occurring behind every scroll to sell us more, more, more. Sometimes it pays off: all of the millions spent on sophisticated code to track users’ habits occasionally results in the purchase of a single fishing gilet, never to be worn on a stag do. There are also the anomalies, when you are presented with material that is so comically irrelevant that you question whether the robots know more about you than you do. Perhaps you are interested in a 16-egg automatic incubator, you just don’t know it yet. Touché, Zuckerberg. In this month’s edition, I have turned the steely gaze back on our big tech overlords with observations on various algorithms.
The Instagram Explore Page
Hedgehogs. Everywhere. I couldn’t understand it. How had my Instagram Explore page become so prickled with hedgehogs? Of all the glitches in the Matrix. I wondered whether I could up the quill count by engaging with as much hog content as possible – short of actually following any of the many (many!!!) hedgehog influencer accounts. Just by clicking on the posts in the recommended tab, I had 100% coverage within no time: baby hedgehogs, hedgehogs in the bath, hedgehogs nibbling various exotic fruits, hedgehogs in little bowties (how?).
Despite a concerted effort to keep me in the fluffy recesses of the internet with various alternative adorable offerings – otters, piglets, capybaras – the novelty eventually wore off. I like cute baby animals as much as the next not-psychopath, but I’m not what one might call an animal person. In fact, I am allergic to most of them, and scared of the rest. My suggested feed soon returned to its usual mishmash of book-lined interiors, Lord of the Rings memes and celebrity gossip. Until Moo Deng burst onto the scene.
The chronically online among you will remember Moo Deng, the pygmy hippopotamus born to be a star. She became a sensation last year when she was photographed in a frenzied blur whilst being handled by a zoo keeper, whose human proportions revealed that this chaotic roly-poly pink-and-grey blob was no larger than a large cat. It had the anarchic energy of a wanted poster; all that was missing was the headline, ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS HIPPO?’
This was immediately succeeded by a picture of her furiously chomping the knee of a poor unsuspecting staff member – a renegade’s rendition of biting the hand that feeds. Many similar images followed, all of them slightly out-of-focus as Moo Deng raged around her enclosure, refusing to cooperate at all times. She was equal parts loveable and menacing. The memes were many, but fame is fleeting. Moo Deng may have been the second biggest brat of 2024, but as she grew in scale, so she diminished in popularity. Apart from on my Instagram Explore page.
After the initial hedgehog experiment, I decided to go all-in on Moo Deng. Since last September, I have consistently maintained a healthy hippo ratio in my recommended feed. For ten solid months, I have been side-tracked by the same rotation of Moo memes every time I open the tab to search for completely normal, unrelated, not-psychopath things. I’ll no doubt be one of the last users to ever gaze upon the grid of @hippo_lover_life_.
This unorthodox Instagram use has laid bare what we already know about the algorithm’s intentions: it is constantly trying to show us more of the same, but different, to keep us obsessively glued to the app. For me, the if you like that, you’ll love this approach has constituted a steady rise in pictures and videos of a podgy, perfectly round frog with a grumpy face and a juicy butt. If I hadn’t belligerently overridden the system, I can only imagine what kind of insane spiral I might have found myself in.
🦛🦛🦛🦛🦛🦛🦛🦛🦛🦛
Rating: 10 Moo Dengs out of 10
Spotify Radio
When a targeted Instagram ad informed me that Mulatu Astatke was playing in my city, I immediately booked a ticket. I couldn’t believe that the 81-year-old vibraphonist and father of Ethio-jazz was still alive, let alone performing so proximately to me. It was an absolute bullseye, as though the entire event had been organised based entirely on my metadata.
Having such an exquisitely broad yet refined taste in music, I had reasonably concluded that, outside of Ethiopia, the only people who knew of Mulatu Astatke were Nas, Damien Marley and me (Nas and Marley having sampled the boisterous Yègellé Tezeta on As We Enter). At the show, I expected that I’d be grooving among several hundred octogenarian African men, who would perhaps each discreetly wonder what I was doing there, as you might wonder what anyone under the age of 80 is doing at a Rod Stewart show (also, surprisingly, still alive and performing). I was sure everyone there would be impressed by my mere presence.
You can thus imagine my surprise when I found myself very much among my people: a sea of European Millennial freelancers. You could tell we were all freelancers because it was all we could do to keep our hands from miming filling out a spreadsheet as we swayed to the spangling vibraphone solos. Plus, all the men were wearing workmen’s jackets and those small, capless baseball caps. I checked my ticket to see whether the event had been sponsored by LinkedIn. Or, indeed, Substack.
There is only one way that this audience of multi-hyphenate creatives could have collectively hit upon this artist, the same way as me: an insatiable thirst for vibey, non-verbal music that won’t distract us from finding a synonym for ‘and’ when we’re on a deadline. For many of us, the gateway was the funky, foreign-tinged rhythms of American trio Khruangbin. But when the track listing ran out, Spotify’s Radio function offered us all the same delicious chaser: Mulatu Astatke.
Hardcore musos will agree that it is bittersweet to learn that your taste is not as unique as you thought it was. On the one hand, there are now others with whom you can bond over the latest bassoon-based dubstep remix by Chicken Coup1. On the other hand, you begin to question whether you really are any edgier than a Swiftie2, gleefully joining in with the mass worship of the human equivalent of unsalted butter, where an essential part of communion is paying a month’s rent for a seat at the back, where you have a pixelated side-view of a screen showing your idol performing some slightly flat dance moves3. Whilst the Mulatu show was far more animated than the Eras Tour, I felt like I had been coerced into joining some mainstream movement concocted by the nefarious Spotify overlords. Still, it hasn’t stopped me from buying tickets to see him again this year. Only this time, I’ll bring business cards.
🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷
Rating: 8 jazz concerts out of 10
Substack Notes
The casual subscriber has no idea what kind of sycophancy goes on behind the scenes here at Substack. In a newsfeed called Notes, people go to great lengths to rack up, invariably, either 2 or 2,000 likes, which are also referred to as Notes. It’s humbling.
These updates draw on a disorienting combination of the most vapid aspects of early Twitter (Just had an omelette #random), the cool, kooky peacocking of peak-era Tumblr (Just had an orgy #rammed #dom) and unbelievably earnest updates about addiction recovery and career milestones (Just signed a book deal #PenguinRandomHouse).
And then there are the LinkedIn lackies making bold claims about how to earn 12 bitcoin a month by following their simple, subscriber-only business plan. But, as I point out in one of my most viral posts (10 Notes), Substack is annoying because I already have a job in marketing, I don’t need my hobby to also be a job in marketing.
📝📝📝
Rating: 3 Notes out of 10
Rec room
Throwback to Bo Burnham’s pitch-perfect Orwellian observations in Welcome to the Internet 🎩 and take a digital detox by closing your laptop and opening Chris’ first book Moveable Feasts, out 3rd July 📕
Words by Alice Brace. Images by Flora Hibberd.
It turns out this is actually a real band. They have 4 monthly listeners.
Swifties, stop reading here.
I’m sorry, Beth. I did warn you. Please don’t unsubscribe.
Mulatu is the greatest
Merci beaucoup ! I am aligned with your ratings and am also now listening to Mulatu