Check your “echo-system”
Illustration by Victor Romanko.
Andrew Milhorn, Contributing Writer
As long as the self serves as a commodity to be sold back to us, our culture will continue to stagnate.
Every day we wake up, scroll, brush our teeth, scroll, defecate, scroll, walk to class, scroll and wait for class to start. Maybe you scroll TikTok, maybe Instagram Reels — I have a friend who primarily uses YouTube Shorts.
The social media giants of today profit off of the shining, smart object that perpetually beams one’s own politics, prejudices, humor, sexual fascinations, addictions and so on — infinitely. Nobody is currently doing this better than TikTok, the briefly banned company Americans watch in between whatever was just happening.
It is not peculiar to try to escape the reality we are all doomed to partake in. This is more or less a base impulse of humanity, and I am sure once whales figure it out, they will also love getting hammered. Whales pending — all mammals with consciousness have tried to find ways around the difficulties of life. The Learning Channel even made a show about this called “My Strange Addiction.”
In the information age, the most profitable addiction is screen addiction, because in addition to farming your data, it allows for more effectively targeted advertisements for the other addictions.
Many, including myself, trade their data in exchange for a stellar timeline. The other day, I saw a video of one of the Island Boys reading “Society of the Spectacle.” I have seen NBA edits with soundtracks unimaginable to even myself. I keep up with a guy who sprays dog medicine on his hands in order to break cinder blocks.
Nowhere has this profit incentive been laid more bare than in the timelines of sports fans after the legalization of sports betting in the United States — or fashion timelines in the face of the payola microtrend final boss.
It is more than likely that your algorithm knows your worst secrets. It has been proven in a court of law that your incognito tab searches were harvested by Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube. Essentially, your data is constantly recycled so advertisers can manufacture consent for brands.
TikTok was not unique in its participation in this data economy — X, YouTube and Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram — all are, or soon will be, embroiled in some sort of user data lawsuit. They take a while to start because nobody reads the terms of service.
In our day and age the consumer often accepts their data being passed about, as the customization of one’s own timeline benefits both user and corporation. The cost of custom entertainment ecosystems and limitless information gives social media giants “an unaccountable trove of information so detailed and expansive that George Orwell never could have dreamed it,” according to lawyer Mark Mao.
These hyper-personal entertainment feeds lead to an “echo-system” effect, where a user’s opinions are constantly reflected back at them, causing them to become more and more extreme. It is called the information age for a reason — and it looks like it’s all downhill from here.
