The Banality of Online Recommendation Culture

A recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations.

By Kyle Chayka

October 30, 2024

Illustration by Ariel Davis

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In the 2010s, affiliate marketing became a dominant strain of online business models. The Wirecutte... See more

When we look back over the past 100 years, traditional commerce (and the culture it indirectly endorsed) was primarily curated by a single person’s point-of-view. Even when commerce moved online, to places like Amazon or Farfetch, retailers still controlled the types of things consumers purchased. Online commerce didn’t innovate a new shopping expe... See more

To me, online content consumption seems to exist on a pendulum of sorts: we love content to the extreme — Unbundle!! Give us more! — until we are overwhelmed with choice and analysis — It’s too much!! Bundle it back up again! — and swing to the opposite side. In the end, we always end up somewhere in the middle... but it’s a lot of swinging back an... See more