Filterworld: algorithmic anxiety is flattening our culture

The rule of vanilla lets our unfeeling gadgets decide what’s best for us.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A podcast guest speaks in front of a mic.

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Sebastian Pandelache on Unsplash.

Here’s another diagnosis to add to modern malaise: algorithmic anxiety. It’s described by Kyle Chayka in his excellent book Filterworld (Heligo Books, 2024) as the:

…awareness that we must constantly contend with automated technological processes beyond our understanding and control, whether in our Facebook feeds, Google Maps driving directions, or Amazon product promotions.

We don’t understand algorithms. Even if we did, we wouldn’t know how they actually work on us as every tech company keeps it a secret, lest competitors learn from them. This has led to the algorithm becoming the century’s newest bogeyman, a phantom we can reference in conversation to make us sound tech savvy and culturally knowing even while we remain in the dark.

‘Algorithmic has become a byword for anything that feels too slick, too reductive, or too optimised for attracting attention’.

Kyle Chayka

One of the oddest outcomes of the ascendency of the algorithm is the seemingly diametric effects on politics and culture. In politics it has polarised people, sorting us into opposing camps and then ensuring we hear only good things about our ‘side’ and only maddening things about the ‘opposing’ side. Instead of calmly listening to a different view, we hurl insults, as performative as Prime Minister’s Question Time and about as enlightening.

Something different is happening with culture. Here, the algorithm makes culture more homogenous; in the words of Kyle Chayka, it is ‘flattened’. The basic rule of what he calls Filterworld is that ‘the popular becomes more popular, and the obscure becomes even less visible’. It is a strange re-mix of Jesus for the digital age: ‘to all those who have, more will be given…but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

The life of an Instagram post is said to be determined in the first five minutes. If it has engagement, it can be sure of more; if it gets none, it will sink. Visibility on social media is vital for artists of all kinds, because this is where all publicity begins. Artists try and game the system, figuring out what kind of content the algorithm will promote. In the process, their creative expression is subtly compromised. People begin to write in a style that gets attention, and what gets attention is decided by the algorithm. Those who tweet will know how the short, pared back medium starts to influence their life away from X. Musicians know that art which is safe and mainstream – the public’s crowded middle where performers like Ed Sheeran have thrived – is likely to succeed.

‘Much of culture now has the hollow, vacant feeling of having been made by algorithm’ according to the cultural commentator Dean Kissick. Chayka observes that: ‘algorithmic has become a byword for anything that feels too slick, too reductive, or too optimised for attracting attention’.

It is often at the margins that breakthroughs emerge; art that makes us see this world in a new and divine light.

There is a valid counter to this development. Previously, what we read, heard and saw as cultural consumers was determined by a small set of experts who filtered content for us. These experts were often drawn from a narrow section of society who inevitably brought their own biases to bear. While this may be true, it is hardly a triumph for the public to have an unfeeling gadget decide what’s best for them, based on what we have liked before and what seems to appeal to most people. At the ice cream vendor, this is like reaching for vanilla every time.

The truth is, in necessarily surrendering to the algorithm (for what alternative is there online?) we miss huge volumes of culture that might appeal to us. It is about as effective as deciding what sea life we like based only on what pops up to the surface of the water.

The best art is not always the most popular and there is a risk that the divine spark of invention that the creator God has placed within each of us – the unlimited potential of being made in the image of God – will not be fanned into existence as often as it could be. Chasing likes is no substitute for patient inspiration. It is often at the margins that breakthroughs emerge; art that makes us see this world in a new and divine light.

‘Behold, I am making all things new’ says the one who sits on the throne in Revelation. That algorithms are making all things similar is the reality we are learning to live with.

Review

Addiction

Culture

Theatre

24 June 2024

5 min read

The ancient drama of rehab

People Places & Things is a modern play with old stories.

Simon Walsh

Simon Walsh is a communications consultant, journalist and non-stipendiary priest in the Diocese of London.

on a stage a woman kneels on a bed amid frantic action around her.

Denise Gough as Emma.

‘There is no higher power,’ says a character defiantly in People Places & Things, the revival of Duncan Macmillan’s 2015 play about addicts and addiction. It’s an echo from Greek tragedy when anyone denies the gods, and now has a modern ring in all the self-help, self-belief talk of recovery and resolve.

Denise Gough reprises her lead performance as Emma for which, last time around, she swept the board in awards and nominations. It’s easy to see why. She’s on stage almost the entire time, compelling and fluent throughout. The opening scene has her in the white-box modern set wearing a Victorian costume, for her character is an actress in Chekhov’s The Seagull – almost meta, and the first hint and how this a show where realities and identities blur with layers upon layers.

Soon after, Emma (if that is her real name) checks into a rehab unit. She doesn’t feel she has a problem but is there for a break. ‘Drugs and alcohol have never let me down,’ she says at one point. A brisk female doctor in a white coat admits her, played by Sinéad Cusack. A couple of scenes later, Cusack reappears as the clinic’s group therapist. This time she’s full of empathy – barefoot and with a scarf over one shoulder – all herbal tea and sympathy.

But the therapist’s work with her charges is vital. Some even get to ‘graduate’ and host a non-alcoholic party the night before they leave, having successfully stayed the course. Probably not Emma though. She’s too feisty, individually unable to admit her problems, and inevitably she crashes. There’s a naturalistic feel to the production and narrative, even when it jolts into dream-like sequences or bright lights with thumping techno music.

Anyone with experience of an addict or addiction will find it all too familiar. The later scene where Emma returns to the parental home is a crucible of pain, and embodies the play’s title. It concerns ‘the people who can make us relapse, the places which trigger associations, and the things which are the props of the old habits’. And it’s made more complex by the family in grief over the recent, sudden death of Emma’s beloved brother in a freak accident. ‘It should have been you instead’ is the parental curse on this remaining child.

There’s a slow and silent feel to the way it develops. The word inexorable comes to mind, something that cannot be changed or stopped. Like Greek tragedy, the tension is in how this will resolve, and if it will turn out as badly as feared. It does and it doesn’t, which is at least true to the addiction journey.

Jeremy Herrin expertly directs an intensely fine cast: Russell Anthony, Holly Atkins, Ryan Hutton, Malachi Kirby, Danny Kirrane, Paksie Vernon, Kevin McMonagle, Ayò Owóyemi-Peters, Lousie Templeton, Dillon Scott-Lewis. These are nuanced, crafted performances which inhabit Bunny Christie’s versatile, stylish set with presence.

What the healings have in common is the aftermath – a sense of vision restored, stability refound, new clarity...

Faith plays at the edges of this work. There are passing references to religion: a ‘bibling grief’, communion wine, the power of prayer. More tears, said St Teresa of Avila, are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones, and this outward expression of a cry for help connotes the spiritual struggle of addicts along with their pity. As the first disciples themselves asked, ‘Teach us, Lord, how to pray.’

Addiction was not something Jesus had much to say about. Healings take place throughout each of the four gospels. The sufferers present with various ailments and of differing origins. For some it is hereditary, others through sin (such as when Matthew records Jesus healing a paralyzed man with the words ‘your sins are forgiven’). At other times there is a clear need for recognition such as when Jesus visits his hometown. He ‘laid hands on a few sick people and cured them’ but otherwise ‘could do no deed of power there… and was amazed at their unbelief’.

These healings, however, do not obviously deal with addiction. The closest connection is probably the examples which deal with demons. The encounter with a man possessed in the land of the Gerasenes, a little earlier, is instructive. Here is someone who ‘lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him anymore, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained but the chains he wrenched apart; and no one had the strength to subdue him’. But Jesus confronts the demon, the ’unclean spirit’, and sends it into a herd of swine ‘numbering about two thousand, which then rushes to the sea and is drowned.

What the healings have in common is the aftermath – a sense of vision restored, stability refound, new clarity. The healed demoniac is found with Jesus, ‘sitting there, clothed and in his right mind’, though the swineherds do not believe it and remain scared. They beg Jesus to leave and the ex-demoniac wants to go with him, but Jesus tells him to stay: ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.’ He is to give his testimony.

Drama at its heart has to be about telling a story and finding a universal truth.

It’s a running debate that lived experience and life identity are now more important than acting ability when it comes to race, sexuality, gender and so on. Denise Gough has given testimony ahead of this run – how as a teenager she fled her native Wexford for London where she fell into homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, and was the victim of grooming. She has told her story, with purpose, much as those people who experienced healing and deliverance gave their own account to the Early Church.

Drama at its heart has to be about telling a story and finding a universal truth. The gospels are full of this, with redemption and rehabilitation. Lives changed, sins forgiven, and a new future made possible. There is power in believing, and knowing that when someone might stumble and fall, it is not the end. In fact, it might just be the beginning.

People, Places & Things is on at the Trafalgar Theatre, Whitehall, London, SW1A 2DY, until 10 August 2024.