Dirt | Substack

As the internet creates endless niches, our tendency towards simplification and safety in numbers is flattening differences and aggregating behavior, just in a more rapid fashion than ever before and at a far greater scale.

Though she knew she was partially responsible for her recommendations, the algorithmic acceleration of content online outpaced her everyday experiences to an absurd degree. “Not every interaction I have in real life would shape my choices. Why should my tiniest interaction with an influencer wearing leg warmers? They fed it to me,” she said. There

... See more

In short, with democratized access, the web became more saturated than ever before, and as consumers, we began to spend more and more time trying to sort through it all. In a state of analysis paralysis, how do we disaggregate signal from noise?

This problem of overabundance is why I wrote my piece last year. As consumption of digital media increas... See more