Transcription
Hey, it's Derek, and it is another episode of Speaks Volumes. And today, we're welcoming to the virtual studio Carl Chaker, the staff writer for The New Yorker, who just published his brand new book called Filter World: How Algorithms Flatten Culture. And you're really going to enjoy this discussion.
I reached out to him after listening to him on another podcast because he was describing the world I exist in, which is recommendation, curation, gatekeeping, and the internet, and how I grapple with trying to be as genuine as thoughtful as possible in my content, if you will. And he unpacks in this conversation and in his book just how this came about and whether or not it's a good thing that we have so many ways to consume media that might be diluting culture or making it harder to know what's good versus what is motivated by other means, such as financial.
In this conversation, we talk about everything from city pop to Australian cafes to the world of Twitter and the the languages one must learn and speak in in order to find success. So, we also talk about journalism and curation. And if you're a fan of music, if you're a fan of tech, if you're interested in this world of algorithms and technology and whether or not the things that we like are actually the things that we like, then I think you'll enjoy this discussion. It's so good. But, let's get into it with Carl Chaker.
Before we get into this brilliant conversation with Carl Chaker that I can't wait for you to hear, this podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. So, I've been a customer for so many years, and let me tell you why I love it. So, Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform where you don't need to know any code. And if you want to build a website, whether you're a photographer or an entrepreneur, small business, big business, or someone like me, you can just go on there without any design or coding knowledge and use one of the templates or tools to get started in building a website super quickly.
So, let me tell you about some features that I love. They have Squarespace Blueprint, which you can build a website within minutes. All you have to do is follow the prompts. You can add the sections, you can choose all the different styles of those sections, and at a click of a button, the website is built. It's pretty incredible. And they also have Squarespace AI where you can type in little bits of information about what your website is about, and it can turn around and give you really well-written copy, so you can get started and go live even quicker. And they also have the Fluid Engine, which I particularly love, where you can drag and drop different parts, whether it's galleries, text boxes, design features, menus really easily, so that you can customize your website just to your specific liking.
So, head to squarespace.com for a free trial, and once you're ready to go live, you can take 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain by going to squarespace.com/volume using the code word volume. Are you ready? Let's get into the conversation.
Hey everyone, it is Speaks Volumes, and today we have Kyle Chisholm. Speaks Volumes, and we have a very special guest with me today. Welcome, Kyle.
Thank you for having me. I'm I'm kind of a fan, so it's fun to be on actual video chat.
That's fun. Like I'm intrigued to unpack that because especially with the book that we're going to talk about today, I'm intrigued about the idea of being a fan of someone like you being a fan of me, knowing that you've been like looking at you being analyzing so many people like myself or or others and dissecting culture. But to introduce yourself a little bit, I Kyle recently released a book called Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. And it's brilliant. It's so much of a rung true to me, and we're just saying this before we jumped on the call, but you were explaining my current existence in many ways about culture. I I exist in talking about music and culture, I guess, and the things that attach to music, algorithms, and how I have to or try to resist interacting with it. And I was compelled to reach out after hearing you on the Dakota podcast, which I was very I'm a very big pat fan of, to to speak to you about that because it's maybe you're helping me to explain my life, but I also think that it's a really interesting conversation for our my audience because there is that kind of battle between music and culture and discovery and what is pure versus what is paid or whatever. But, how's the how's the promotional tour been for you?
Uh, it's been really good. I mean, the most satisfying thing with this book is that I worked on it for three or four years, and I've thought about the ideas for, you know, maybe seven or eight years at this point. So, it's all been stuck in my head in a way. And so, to have the book out, it's amazing to hear people resonate with it, to hear people say that, "Oh, this does speak to me, this reflects my life," because I kind of wrote it to reflect on my life, too. Like, I have lived through the past decade or 15 years of the internet. I've been implicated in all these distribution channels as a journalist, as a writer, as an author. And so, I've had to contend with everything, and I've gotten annoyed and upset and disturbed by what's going on. So, I'm like, "Oh, finally I can share these annoyances with other people and we can kind of come together over them." So, yeah, it's like cathartic in a way, both to have the book come out and to like talk about it and have these like consciousness-raising sessions, almost.
It's It's amazing to think that there's probably a lot of sectors that relate to this. I guess that most industries that have to put themselves out there, whether marketing or content creators or publishers, right?
Mhm. I mean, basically everything interacts with algorithmic recommendations right now. When you're in like the wider culture industry, let's say. Like my book is about culture, which is broadly defined as like things you consume with your eyes or ears or mouth or whatever. Like, it's aesthetic experiences that you have. And so many of those now, from TV and movies to books on Amazon to TikTok videos to music on Spotify, like you're constantly interacting with algorithmic recommendations.
I find that really interesting because I feel like, and I say this to my audience a lot, that I feel like because I'm a bit of a nerd that checks The Verge every day, for instance, that we we as consumers. I love it. Whether we like it or not, we are very aware of the systems. Or I maybe the younger generation is more very aware of the systems that are in play and how we interact with things. And so when I talk about developments in Spotify or how I had a video about talking about Dua Lipa and and her advertising strategy, people are thinking about this. And I think that it's an an interesting phenomenon as a like perhaps music fans to be thinking about, "How am I receiving this? And is it good for me?" Did you feel that in in the development of your book?
Yeah, I mean, it's not often that you get the opportunity to think about how your culture is distributed or like how you how it gets to you rather than just what you feel when you're consuming it. Like when we think about consuming culture, we're like, "Okay, I'm listening to a song. I'm looking at a painting. I'm reading a book." But there's this whole other side to that interaction of how that particular book or song or ad or sneaker got to you, which has a lot to do with marketing and corporate machinations and now algorithmic distribution. Um So, I kind of wanted to focus on that and bring some clarity to it or critique it in a way. Like in in the book, I have a little section bringing up Walter Benjamin's essay on unpacking his library, where he talks about how he has these boxes full of books that he's carried with him his whole life and how they mean so much to him. His identity is is held within these books. And we kind of don't get that anymore. Like we don't get to hold on to the culture that means something to us. We don't get to like have the permanent collection of music that even comes in a CD or a vinyl record. Instead, we're like balancing on the shifting sands of Spotify or the TikTok feed to encounter a musician.
Yeah, I've been thinking about a lot how, and we all we can only look at our own experiences in this case, music fans, to to what might have been better or or worse, but I I think about how I I'd look at my CD collection and not only love looking at the collection of things that represented me, but then go through and go, "What do I want to listen to today?" and have that choice that I curated. And now I don't I do collect music, but not in that same way. I can't just look at it and be like, "This is my taste." It's kind of it's so broad. So, I guess now that we've kind of jumped in the deep end already, I do think it's worth explaining to everyone, uh, what Filter World is. I know that you've probably done a lot on your tour, but I'd love for the audience to understand it from how you've articulated it in your book.
I really wanted a single word to stand in for this entire book. And I think on the one hand, it's like a good label to travel through the internet and get distributed through TikTok or podcast or whatever. Uh Uh, but I just wanted something that captured this like immersive environment of algorithmic recommendations that we're in. Like the way that we're surrounded by digital machines that are constantly surveilling us and then suggesting things that fit with the interactions that we've already had or the actions we've already taken online. So we like live in a world of filters, and it's a kind of expansion of that idea of the filter bubble, which was an early 2010s term for the kind of echo chamber of social media. But now we're seeing that same effects not just in your Twitter feed, but in your TikTok feed, your YouTube recommendations, your Spotify playlists. Uh, it just feels inescapable in a lot of ways, and both as consumers of culture and as creators of culture, whenever you put something out there, you have to contend with that like filter world that's around you.
To contend with that is a good way to put it. As for someone as myself, cuz I feel like I'm I exist on the nexus of a being a uh, I guess you would call like a very niche tastemaker back in back in the day on like radio, internet radio, what have you, and not not really contending with audience, not really contending with storytelling or because no one listened to it anyway. Like it was like, or very few, you know. And and then I fell into what I'm doing now and this algorithmic culture. It's it's a lot of people alive. I'm doing my best to to kind of resist in a sense that I'm not trying to succumb to the its temptations. But I think that's what's most interesting about the creators of culture, as much as the not that I'm a creator of culture, I'm more of a capturer of culture, but I do I did resonate with me when you said algorithmic culture a a lot in your book because I think that's such a kind of breaks my brain a little bit. What would you consider to be like the difference between say culture maybe 20 years ago and algorithmic culture now?
We do like we live in an algorithmic era, I suppose. And that's I don't feel like that's a grand pronouncement on my part. It's just like that's reality. That's how we interact with stuff on the internet through these like recommendations. So I think we do like we're in the algorithmic era of culture. And I think algorithmic culture, which is hard hard to define or pin down, but I think it's like culture that is produced and distributed through the mechanisms of algorithmic feeds that we deal with now. Like, it's the way that a music producer has to pack in sounds to 10 seconds to fit in on TikTok, or the way that a YouTuber has to release videos constantly in order to keep up with the demand of the feed, or even if you're posting on your Instagram stories, it's the way that you like can't tell who's going to see your stories or feel pressured to post a video instead of a still photo because that's what the the algorithmic feed rewards. Um So, I suppose it's just culture that bears the influence of those distribution systems.
20 years ago, and I know you mentioned this, you know, in your book as well, there were still, you know, arbiters of taste or gatekeepers or industries. If you take music and radio, there are multiple steps to get on the radio. It's not just you you submit it and it gets there. There's there's curators, there's programmers, there's program heads, there's record labels, there's pluggers, there's all those sort of things. What is what's the what is the difference now? Is it that it's not chosen by any one person or even five people?
It it feels like that's kind of the core of the era switch to me. Like 20 or 30 years ago, we were in an era when the decisions of cultural distribution were made by humans. I, you know, based on data, based on Nielsen ratings or radio plays or whatever, but you had a record label person who was making a decision. You had a theater programmer who was making a decision about what to put on the marquee. And now we live in this more algorithmic era where distribution or like promotion is not just based on if a person likes you or not or if a curator likes you or not, but how much attention are you already getting? How much like momentum can you show within a feed to then show that you deserve even more promotion. Um So, it's almost an automation of that cultural distribution process. Like you don't have to make your way through the gatekeepers. All you have to do is keep getting more and more attention. And, you know, there are good and bad consequences to that.
Yeah, I was what that was my next question. Like, is it better or worse? In the sense that I used to work in television, and they had the Nielsen ratings as well. And I always at that time, I was a younger person in that industry where there were a lot of people a lot older than me. And I didn't I when I understood from the the ratings woman how it all worked, and they've got these boxes in people's houses, and it's very imprecise. And I'm like, "This is are we sure that 5 million people watched MasterChef?" Are we sure? And is it the fact that the algorithms know us better and can track things better and distribute things that we'd like, you know, more accurately? Is that a positive thing in comparison to these crude kind of technologies?
Yeah, it's such a good question. Like in technology, we tend to think that like high res higher resolution or more data is good. And in this case, like we're in a moment where your every mouse move is watched. Like your every click is surveilled. Maybe the things that you say around your phone are tracked. And I mean, I don't think we're happier because of that. I don't I don't think we're like more satisfied with our technological interactions because they know every single thing they do that we do. So, I think there's like a granularity of data that's new. There's a real time-ness to the data that's very new. Like with Nielsen ratings or radio plays, you're not seeing it at the second that it happens in the same way that like TikTok, you can kind of feel in real time as things get distributed and spread wider and wider. I mean, like on my TikTok, like a a week ago, I started seeing the the Donghua Jinlong Chinese manufacturing memes. And I've watched as that meme has just gone further and further. And I'm like, "Oh, it's getting distributed. It's like winning the algorithmic feed." So, it does it feels like a kind of automated decision-making.
Yeah, and it's weird as someone that I'm sure we are similar in a way that like we consume and understand internet culture. And the more that I the deeper I get into the being a creator in this space and try to understand what is real life versus what is not IRL or not, because like I do believe I've made friends from what I've done. I do believe like I resisted for so long to say community because I'm like, "That's so gross and so influencer." But there are people that come up to me and tell me what I've, you know, impacted to them or like they've made friends over certain things or all their friends talk about videos or whatever. And I'm like, "Oh, there there does feel like there is a not not for me, but there are cultures that exist purely online." Would you agree with that?
For sure. I mean, I grew up on the internet. Like I've I found a lot of community over many years, you know, let's call it 25 years or something. Or not 25, maybe two decades, uh, of making friends and developing relationships and like developing cultural communities, especially in so far as like a community where you discuss what music you like, what design you like, what you're thinking about. And I think the internet is amazing for that. Like your videos, I think I was going to say before, there's a curation element that absolutely persists on the internet where you have really interesting people with unique perspectives bringing their voice to more and more people. Um, but what I worry about or where I see the influence of the algorithmic feed is that community can't be built if everything is changing all the time. Like if you just expect to be swept in and out on the algorithmic tide, you don't stay long enough, you don't invest long enough to be part of a community. You just kind of rely on it coming back to you passively. So I think that's like against community in a way. It's like an addiction to be part of a lot of different cultures at the same time. You're not You're not a goth, you're like a You like You like rock, you like speed core because that's what the internet likes type thing.
Yeah. Yeah, trends cycle a lot faster. I think a lot of people have observed lately like subculture works differently. Identities, cultural identities work differently, uh, than they used to. And I think it's like everything is sped up, everything feels more ephemeral, everything feels harder to grab onto. And that's a side effect of how culture exists on the internet.
Saying that you grew up on the internet, as as did I, I think we're not far off in age as well. Is there a golden era of the internet to you? I know you talked a lot in the book, especially toward the end, about regulations, and I wonder if there's I don't know if we can go back. I don't know if you can change things to the point where you can have a more pure experience or slower experience, but yeah, in in your time on the internet, is there like a a better time for what from what it is now?
Yeah, I mean, I think we all have nostalgia for different moments, and it's like you can't bring back dial-up. You can't necessarily bring back the desktop computer or the like dynamic we had around that. When I think of this question, I'm like, "When did things work? When did they feel sustainable? When did they feel interesting?" I definitely think about Tumblr and like the early 2010s to mid-2010s where it did feel like a slower feed, non-algorithmic feed, a permanence to curating an account and building this like mood board essentially that was ever expanding. And I miss the incentives that people had to post really interesting stuff on Tumblr. Like that was where the best curation was happening in my opinion. You could have the Tumblr of weird medieval manuscript illuminations and Italian modernist design and brutalism with plants. Like there was that was the kind of golden era of niche curation, I think, that that stuck around and felt sustainable. And I think that is super gone now. Like it kind of exists on Instagram stories where I follow accounts to get certain kinds of visual content. But then like it you repost it, and then it's gone 24 hours later. And and people screenshot it and put it on their mood boards to then put in their next campaign or whatever.
I I do recall during the Tumblr era, there were people, professionals and archivists, that would be going to libraries, getting magazines, documenting things, building career. I know I I personally know someone that built a career direction career in the music industry off creating these vibes that they researched. That's That's a lot of work. I know I put a lot of work in what I do. I don't do that though. That's a different level.
Well, what was I think a difference in that era was that people were taking things that were offline and then putting them online for the first time in a way. Like it was early on in the visual era of the internet, and people were scanning the old shelter magazines, and they were looking into the old artist catalogs or whatever, and that felt new and different. Whereas now it feels a bit like digging to the bottom of the barrel, or it's you can spend so much time remixing and rehashing and making a new version of a meme. You don't need to go somewhere far afield. You don't need to like go to the library. You're just remixing what's already online.
That's what messes with my head a little bit when I when I came across your book and what I've been thinking about is this, as you mentioned in the book, regurgitation. Because I I've prided myself on only putting out videos that I personally like. I like the thing. I know about it myself. I knew about it before and before I I had a platform or what have you. But I'll see a good example would be Frank Ocean doing his sneaky little get out of his latest last album or Endless by doing that and then dropping Blonde independently. I've seen that video retold countless times. And it it hurts my head. It upsets me. I get it as well because there are a lot of people that haven't heard that story, and it is a new story to someone that's retelling it, perhaps. But I was like, "I don't understand. I don't know what this is anymore." And maybe maybe journalism is the same. Not all journalism, but like people can write the same article about the same thing in lots of places. But I feel like because it's all going to the same people, that this story is I don't even know if this story means anything to me anymore. It's like so it's just reused. What I mean, treat by your reaction to this.
Yeah, it's so interesting. I haven't thought about it in so many words, but it's like, even whenever anyone who's online right now, I think senses that regurgitation, like the infinite iterations of the same kind of explainer video or the same cultural story or like the same weird castle in Scotland or the one thing in Iceland. Like there's a there's the regurgitation of the same subjects over and over again because they're good stories and they are meaningful, they are cool. But how many times can we do this? Like like should it wouldn't it be better if it wasn't someone reiterating the same, like, "Here's how one thing happened" every other week? Like I would love to have a slower cycle of regurgitation at least, you know.
Perhaps in the regulations, the governmental regulations, you can have a limit on how many times the Frank Ocean story can be told.
Oh my god. The the boredom meter. Like in journalism, for example, in the media industry, which is a very human industry still, there's an anxiety over telling the same story as someone else. Like you don't want to do the same profile that another magazine is doing. You don't want to go to the same travel destination that someone went to six months ago, cuz it's too stale, it's like not interesting enough. It's embarrassing to be late or boring. But there's no embarrassment of being late or boring on the internet at this point. It's just like, "Put it all out there, see how it does." Like And there's no editor. There's no editor to tell you that's whack because it's been done. It's You know, and I should mention you're staff writer at The New Yorker. I think that's important to say that you are part of of of an institution that has checks and measures to make sure what you guys are putting out is quality. And it's not repetitive.
It's it's totally true. There's a lot of gatekeeping in that, but I think gatekeeping is such a hard word for me cuz it's like it can be good and it can be bad. Like What's good? What are good ones and bad ones?
Well, I think gatekeeping in the TikTok argot now means something confusing. It's like not telling you what restaurant, not telling your followers what restaurant you went to or something, like gatekeeping information. Um, I think the old sense of gatekeeper was like someone who disallowed access from cultural distribution or like would choose who was successful and who wasn't, like a curator, like a record label executive. And I think that was a there was a lot of bias imposed in that. There was a lot of like structural problems there, and not everyone could have access to that kind of publicity. And now you can on the internet. It's like more equitable and democratic in a way. So I don't know. I think it's if we can shift from gatekeeping to like curating, like what is a good act of curating? A good act of curating is like making sure stuff is not boring or too repetitive or too much like another thing. It's that like editor sense of like, "Is this whack? Like should is this actually good or not?" And if it's not good, let's not do it.
But the curating thing is interesting cuz I agree, but then also specifically to my lane of music content, whatever you want to call it. A lot of people call themselves curators. People call me one, and I don't I don't consider myself that. But, curators in music are most mostly most of their posts are paid by record labels. So, even I think what is ringing true to a lot of this stuff that you're saying to me is like these definitions are changing to the point we don't know what they I don't I don't even know if a curator can exist on these platforms because they don't reveal that they're being paid. Can they exist?
Yeah. There I mean, my career background was in the art world where curator means a very specific thing and job, and it comes with a specific set of ethics and practices that are very carefully watched over in the industry, or like more or less carefully in some instances. Uh So, to me, a curator there's like a responsibility to curating that I think has gotten lost in how we use it today, which like a curator is meant to give context to a piece of culture, is meant to expand a history, put objects in conversation with each other, make a strong archive, do the research, and like assemble things into a meaningful order. And I mean, that's you know, the strategist at New York magazine is like not necessarily. It's good curating in that, yeah, you can find a great kind of soap. But, like, it's not broadening my understanding necessarily of the history of soap or the practices of soap. Like I think we need more of like the the former kind of curating and less of the latter, which just means like picking something good.
Every word is kind of open slate it feels like that you can attach. I think for me, I can relate that to being People are like like what you do is you're a journalist. And I'm like, "I'm I'm just a fan of music." Like, journalists to me, and I people have been pushed back pushed back with me on this, and it's respectful in a good way, but like I'll say journalists have like their their code of conduct, their ethics, the way that they must pass through primary, secondary research to and once something's put out in the world that, you know, it it's really trying to achieve something or or present something new to the world or expose something, what have you. I guess what, I'm kind of trying to find the words within myself about what I do because it's yeah, I I don't consider it curation. It's personal taste that I'm sharing, but I'm it's not journalism. And so there is this thing, person that in every industry exists in order for me to sustain to do this, I have to make money somehow. So there is an element of that in it. So like the publications being replaced by individuals is a really it's a really scary thing as as someone that's part of it.
Well, it's like what what you do in terms of highlighting things that are your personal taste and choosing subjects to cover, bring up, or promote is like what a magazine editor does sometimes. It's what like a retail buyer does sometimes for a design boutique. It's what a museum curator does sometimes. Like there's an educational role to it. And it's also what a critic does sometimes. Like a a critic in the more like Susan Sontag sense of like an intellectual who is having thoughts about things they're interested in and then expressing them. And I do, I find it fascinating this like new genre of commentator or curator or critic or whatever you want to say that who is we're all kind of rowing the boat of culture, you know? Like we're all moving in different directions or like, you know, swimming in the school of fish and we're all going somewhere collectively. And everyone's helping shape that direction. Sometimes you do it in writing, sometimes you do it in a video, sometimes you just talk to your friends about what you're interested in, but we're all kind of participating in that like dialogue. And some people do it more publicly than others. Like you do it very publicly, explicitly publicly, cuz it's your face and your voice and your presence in front of the camera. And I do it a little less publicly, cuz it's like through a magazine piece or a, you know, blog post or a newsletter.
If you were, you have been and you still are a creator in some sense on on Twitter. Where I know you spoke you spoke about it in your book. And you know, you you have a following on Twitter and you have discussed as well how you've existed on that platform. Like I guess it the the term creator perhaps wasn't as much of a thing when Twitter was as big as it was, but did you feel like you were succumbing or felt uh a pressure to to be uh a a creator on Twitter that comes with its own rules of how to engage and be popular?
For sure. There's like a pressure to behave in a way on Twitter. And I think the height of Twitter creation pre-dated the emergence of the word curator or creator. Uh, like if you think of the original Twitter creators, it would be like Drill or something. Like the the big accounts on Twitter would not become creators or influencers, they would become writers. Like they would become writers on a TV show or writers for a magazine or a novelist. And so the path didn't end on Twitter in a way. Like the platform was not the locus of creation, it was actually the book or the magazine or the the show. Um, nevertheless, I felt a lot of pressure to develop an audience on Twitter. Like to express my ideas on it and kind of fight in that daily discourse of debate around your chosen topic, which for me was like tech and culture and art and whatever. So, it was like I felt like a mandated presence and like a way to show off your taste and your voice.
What were you fighting against that? Like for me, I fight against just Yeah, retelling telling stories that everyone knows, sharing stuff that I just learned cuz I've tried that and it's not it doesn't come off as me or just trying to follow trends or trying to talk about the Beyoncé record cuz it's just out because I because I know people will watch it. I don't do this. What What were you trying to preserve even though like you know that there are rules of the road? Like what was the core of the originality of it or the difference?
I mean, I think as journalists, it's like everyone's chasing what's happening right now and it's responding to like the the dialogue of whatever is happening. Um, I mean, I think like you, I just tried to follow my own personal taste as much as possible and like my you know, my Twitter use has gone up and down in the in the very strange eras that the platform has gone through, but my favorite tweets are the ones just about the most arcane random stuff that like only I and 30 other people on Twitter are interested in, or it's like jokes about Karl Ove Knausgård's leather jackets or like some obscure critical theory or like a revived joke about the digital art scene in Brooklyn in 2011. Like Like that, I think that's at the core of like what I can express that no one else can or will. And so, that was kind of what I That's what I take the most pride in, maybe, but of course, it's not what gets the most likes.
I I always think of my friend Delia Cai, who's a great writer, and she I noticed her getting these like incredibly popular viral tweets a lot, and she's very good at it. And one day she was like, "Yeah, you know, I save these for the weekends because that's when people are just online and like waiting to be hit with a relatable moment." Wow. I was like, "That is so incredibly That's such a evil Not evil, you know, but that's so intentional, and it's like I was so impressed. I was like, "Wow, you You figured out the formula and you nail it. It's like hitting home runs every time you step up to the plate."
I've never heard it articulated like that, but it it it is so similar to TikTok or or content creation nowadays, but I I feel like I wasn't aware that Twitter had those same things at the time where I saw viral tweets, but I I never figured out I was good at Twitter, but I did I did understand that like how In some cases, how you capitalize things or not capitalize things, how you make it seem like you just thought of it, wrote it, sent it within 2 seconds can do a lot for something as opposed to when I tried to overthink something really funny and no one saw it. There's these codes that you I guess existing on the internet you you start to learn, right? And that helps you on Twitter, I gather.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you learn the codes of any given platform, right? Like because Twitter was not super algorithmic for a long time, the codes became very well established, and they were more like human codes, like a sense of humor, like that immediacy. Whereas now on Instagram, say, the code is like you post a video, not a photo. Like don't post a photo. Or on TikTok, it's like well, sometimes your videos should be 10 minutes long, and other times they should be 1 minute long. And like you're always updating your sense of what you should be doing or what format you should be chasing. And I feel like that's one of the worst aspects of the algorithmic feed is that you don't have consistency. You don't have a slowly building context as a creator, as a writer, as an artist. It's uh the rules are always changing on you.
I can relate to this recently because I announced some events that I'm doing in New York and LA, and I don't do picture posts. I don't know how to do those. And so I asked my DJ friend, like, "Is it true you have to post a picture of yourself first before the post or because that does better?" Because like, and I don't do that on TikTok cuz I'm like, "I've tried it all and I'm like, screw all that, I'm going to do me and this is how I'm going to do me." But then when I go to Instagram, I'm like, "I need people to see this," so I'll post a photo, right? Yeah, I'm I'm trying to play the game. Do you know if it works?
I don't. I don't I'm kind of cynical, but I was too scared to not because I wanted people to see it, so I was like, "I'd better better to try the rule of thumb than to get no one to see it because maybe Instagram sees it as an ad." Like as creators or as anyone who wants to have their voice heard on the internet, whether you have a show to promote or a book or an article or whatever, it's like you are made acutely conscious of what rules you have to play by or the fact that you do have to like conform to a template. Like with with the Instagram thing, I mean, I saw a lot of friends of mine doing these activist posts about Gaza, about Israel, and they would often follow them with like, "Selfie for Gaza." I know it's it's a very serious subject, but that was just so bleak to me. It's so bleak. Grim. Yeah, it's it's super super grim that you would have to be like, "Here is my activism meme about fundraising, whatever, and then immediately after I have to post a hot selfie because it's going to help it get promoted and getting promotion is my duty to this meme or this activist color, whatever." It's so that it just underlines the utter depravity of what we have to do on the internet.
The the whole idea of promotion is like the the opposite to what the platform like the platform say that that's what you get and that's what you why you build a platform, but every time you promote something, it doesn't want you to see that. And it like and so people I what I'm about to say next is like both true and not true. People say to me, "Derrick, I love what you do because you never you never ask anything from us. You just want to keep giving." And that is true, full stop. But then I have a podcast, I have events, and I want people to hear about it. And people don't see that because it's not, "Hey, I want to tell you about this song." And so then I the point I often think about, what is what is the point of what I'm I'm building? What I have lots of followers, but I can't reach them. So I don't to share personally. Like I've stopped caring about the followers. And I know that a lot of people say it doesn't matter, but it's it looks good, it helps with brands, it helps with a lot of things. But if that's the goal, it doesn't it's not going to help me, which is a really weird structure that they've built, do you think?
I mean, it's like what's the incentive? Like when platforms are like in their honeymoon phase, let's say, and you can just get an audience by doing cool stuff and being interesting and the numbers always going up, then you feel good and you're encouraged to post more and just like express yourself. And then as they like turn up the monetization dial and turn down your direct access to your audience, as they turn up the influence of the algorithmic recommendations, you feel I mean, I've felt many people have felt bereft of that or like it becomes depressing when you don't see the numbers go up, when you don't feel like you have access to those people who you know want to hear from you. And that's just like it's such a problem of the current structure of the internet that even if someone opts in to following you, even if someone wants to get things from you, that intention might be taken away from them because of their other interactions or because the platform decides some other format of thing is better. And then like that does make me optimistic for more direct modes of interaction, like email newsletters, like a Patreon that you go to or a website that you type into your browser. Like intentionality, we need more intentionality in those relationships.
I kind of sometimes wonder why I do this podcast, right? Because I I have to remind myself because I started it because I realized that I was I was following these algorithms and and and they might change and these followings that I have might not mean anything and I wanted to build and contribute to my audience something that I felt meaningful. But sometimes I look at it and I go, I can get a million views over here and I can get thousands or tens of thousands of views with the or listens with the podcast. And I I personally have to keep myself in check about what what's important, what I'm contributing because it's it it's a slippery slope, I think.
It is. I mean, it's easy it's easy for it to look more successful to reach the higher number of people on TikTok or on Instagram or whatever, and then you lose track of like the value of a more direct interaction or of a more intentional fan of your work. Like I mean, we kind of have the same problem of like I need to get a salary as a journalist and I need to have people who want to buy my books and stuff like that. And it's like reading your writing or watching a video is one step in the relationship. Like buying the book is another. Actually reading the book is another. Emailing me after you read the book because you like it is like the best thing you could possibly do. So, it's like all of the those later interactions, the actual intentional buying or talking about it or whatever, that's so much more meaningful than just the drive-by extra 10,000 views that you might get on a good video or something.
In publishing this book, is there anything stopping you from creating as Carl Chaker, the journalist on TikTok? Is it impossible? Can you just not?
No, I I You know, I feel the pressure to do that. I feel the pressure to be present in every way I can possibly be present. I think for a long time I haven't found it appealing, even as someone who has like been on TikTok since 2020 or something actively. I'm like, I love the platform. I think it's super entertaining and gives rise to super interesting forms of content. I think it's a bit of stage fright. I think like through through the process of publishing this book, particularly, I have gotten more used to speaking directly, speaking in a public context, whether that's in real life or uh on digital channels. And I I I have also I think there's a shift happening, which is bad for me as a writer, away from text. Yes. Text is text is uh maybe a niche medium in the future, and I have given a lot of thought to that. And I love that people listen to audiobooks. Like, I know tons of people who have listened to my audiobook for this book, and that's how they ingest the material, and that's great. But it makes me think about how people best receive ideas. Like, ultimately, what we want to do is like bring ideas to people and communicate with them. So, if if they prefer to get their ideas in audio or in a video, like who's to say that's worse necessarily?
I'm guilty of Well, even saying guilty is probably like I question that cuz I'm an audiobook person. I'm I struggle with the the written word for a variety of different reasons, but it uh the format's ingestion, I think, is an interesting way of putting it, as you said. Very biological, unfortunately, but No, but I understand because sometimes it's like, "Oh, you know, uh I don't have much time left. I've got to listen to this on 2x." But it's like you can't you can't read on 2x. So, for example, even as a creator, when people ask me how how I've done done all these things or how I People will ask advice for how they could do it. Uh mine started by accident. And but because I there was a trend and I I filmed something cuz I had I owned something that matched that trend, and people asked me questions about it, and that was the start. And so, it's really hard, and I don't I wouldn't know how to advise anyone where it's like, "Oh, you want to start on TikTok, say, for example, as a journalist, to just go and go, 'Hey, it's Carl. I'm going to start talking about this now.'" Like it's
I wouldn't be able to do it. If you were to say, "Derek, TikTok's popping off. You have a radio show. You should talk about music." I'm like, "What? No." You know? But it just happened that people asked me questions, and I don't know how how that transition can work for people that see the the use of it, but don't want to be inauthentic. Right.
Well, if you're not authentically interested in doing a thing, like should you do it, actually? Like if you're not that into making a video, should you make a video? I would hope not. I would hope that any medium has a way of rewarding you. So, like I There are really interesting writers who just do their thing on Substack, and they're not talking heads. Like they're not trying to do TikToks or podcasts or anything. They are writers. There should be a way to be a writer. There should be a way to be a podcaster. There should be a way to be a video maker. Like, ideally all these things are sustainable and they all hit audiences that appreciate them. I hope so. Ones that have very sustainable, I guess, is the is the ideal.
I want to really ask you about what the filter world of music is and I I want to get there by understand having you explain about the filter world cafe that you touched on very clearly in your book and I guess let's let's start there and then we can go into music a little. Yeah, I mean, I I kind of wrote this book because of the generic coffee shop. Like, the around 2015, 2016, I wrote this essay called Welcome to Aerospace, which was basically built on an observation that wherever you travel through the world, through like, you know, more or less westernized international cities, you can find the same design of coffee shop with its white subway tile walls and its reclaimed wood furniture and its pendant Edison bulbs hanging from the ceiling and its handmade ceramic vessels with cappuccinos or latte art in them and the succulents and the you know, cement countertop. Like, there's a there was a visual argo that I noticed as a journalist whether I was in LA or Berlin or Kyoto or, you know, Beijing or wherever, you could always find this cafe and you could find it most easily through Yelp or Google Maps. Like, these digital platforms enabled access to the generic cafe. And my conclusion after observing that for a while was that the digital platforms were making the the generic cafes. They were like, bringing them into existence. Uh, and I had a a German consultant who described it to me as uh a harmonization of tastes around the world. Uh, this guy Igor Schwarzman, who I think is a great thinker on this stuff. And I think given the rise of these digital platforms and the algorithmic feeds that like bring us toward the same trends at the same times, international culture has become more generic. And we can witness it in these very specific examples like the coffee shops.
As an Australian, the Australian cafe is what you've mentioned as well. Is is an internationally known thing. Mhm. And that's a lot of what you speak about, which is a to kind of live here and it come from here and for people to understand that like flat whites and avocado toast and how the cafes present themselves and is is an Australian thing. Is bizarre that I I do as you do as well, seek out those types of comforts when I'm around the world. I'm like, "Oh, this is a cool place." It feels cool. Yeah, it it feels the paradox. Exactly, cuz it it totally isn't then, right? And it's it you said, I forget what you said about that quote from that guy, the something of taste. Uh A harmonization of taste. Harmonization of taste. So, music. What is the Australian cafe, the the filter world cafe of music?
Yeah, it's I feel like every medium has its own example. And like some are more generic than others, maybe. Like I think anyone on TikTok notices TikTok voice, which is like a style of speaking and a tone that like a lot of creators on TikTok have in common, wherever you are in the world. Um And music, I mean, I think it depends a bit on the platform that you're on. Like each platform has its own flavor to me. And so, the YouTube flavor to me is the the lo-fi chill hip-hop beats to relax/study to, the kind of like ambient, semi-acoustic, semi-synth, infinitely extruded, running forever, you can never tell when one song stops and another starts, like that kind of slightly more interesting elevator music, more or less. Uh, like that's filter world music to me. Which you also often hear in these cafes, like the the multi-sensory experience. Uh, and then I think music in a in the like world of TikTok is this kind of like I mean people have also called it stream bait or Spotify core. It's this kind of like breathy female vocalists, like again, synthy, uh, drum loops, more propulsive in a TikTok contact context. Um, I find it really interesting how songs themselves are like broken down by the ecosystem. Like, you can write a song and it'll sound one way, but someone on TikTok will speed it up or replace the voice with a robot voice or like remix it into a a TikTok optimized version. And I feel like that is the sound of music in in the era of TikTok.
That's such a great example because I think it's going to be such a unique phenomenon to look back on the the sped-up bracket sped-up era of of music on the internet. And slowed down and like, you know, the Australian band here, uh, Ocean Alley had this song called Confidence and it the speed-up sped-up version is the popular version and it's it if people don't want to listen to the original version. And it speak it's so, again, grim in many ways, but it maybe that's just the the the speed that it should have been at, I don't know. But that's like, to me that's like the death of artistic intention. It's like, oh, the musician made it made it whatever BPM." Like, no, no, no, it should be it should be faster. Like, I'm going to I'm going to speed it up and that's how it should be. And it's like I don't know, there's there's the video editing strategy of retention editing or whatever that's called where you use like camera shakes and sudden angle changes and like whatever to keep people's lizard brain tuned into the video. And that's like the same thing in music. It's like the sped-up version tunes into your lizard brain, you know, back of the brainstem pathologies or whatever and it's like you like this. It I just think it's the junk food of culture, like not in a pejorative way, but things are being optimized to appeal to our aesthetic consumption habits in a way that's like unhealthy. I I used to work in the music industry and it was like, "Make sure you have this hook right at the first beat at the thing that's going to say everything about the song straight away so that people can you know, hook into it immediately and you can promote it more easily and all that or what have you."
My hot take is that city pop is filter the filter of cafe. Because I didn't know it as that when I was a fan of it maybe 15 years ago. I just had a collection of Japanese pop music that I liked from the 70s and 80s. And then it became city pop and now it feels like every other day I'll get a viral city pop video of the same songs. And to jump off the back of the lo-fi thing, a lot of city pop is terrible. It's like really generic bad 70s-80s, you know, yacht rock kind of a Japanese, but because it's Japanese, because it's foreign, because it's like got these wispy-haired kind of nautical-looking Japanese women, it's like it's kind of tasteful. So kind of I feel like it's the Australian cafe of music.
Yeah, no, you're totally right. I mean, I think I I write about city pop a lot in the book and I think it's like it it hit the YouTube algorithm spot on in like the mid-2010s or something. Like city pop and the kind of like Japanese ambient stuff that has something in common with the lo-fi chill beats. Um and for city pop it remind when I listen to it and I love it. Like I love it to death. I think there's some incredible albums in there that are super unique. Um but it has that like junk food quality of like there's horns, there's big drums, there's like powerful vocals, there's a driving beat that's like not too fast and not too slow. And it's just like fun. It it appeals to all of your basic senses of what a fun song should be and thus it seems to have become really popular just everywhere. And an algorithmic hack I think is I'm learning this myself is that Japan to the west is infinitely appealing and exotic. So unintentionally a lot of my videos that I've talked about Japanese artists are my viral videos because I'm a fan of these artists and I'll talk about them and then I look back and be like oh, it has that extra bit of sauce on it. You know? Japan is the algorithmic sauce.
It's It is. It's so oblique. But it's a I wrote a story or an essay about uh the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai's film In the Mood for Love, which I think has some kind of a similar effect where everyone loves the aesthetic, loves the footage of it, loves the fashion in part because it's so exotic in a non-western context. Like it's Hong Kong, it's the mid-century, it's like the the cheongsam dresses and the noodles and stuff. It like feels so exotic and other, but it's actually just like really good for the internet. It's like really good aesthetics. It it aestheticizes lo-fi film quality. It like has really rich colors. It just has the right vibe and thus it's really good and really popular in the TikTok era. And that's identifying those like little pieces of culture that just do really well for whatever reason right now is so interesting to me.
Yeah, I think for me personally it would be Ryuichi Sakamoto would be my like I've been a fan and I'm like one of the like on the on the internet on TikTok I guess in short form which is such a really grim narrow way to describe what I'm about to say but like I people know that I know what I'm talking about with with with with with regards to him. And so and that's worked really well for me and I I don't talk about him often because I know it works really well and I only talk about it when I have something to say about it. But it is he is that same he works for the internet cuz he's like huge back catalog. Obviously recently passed but you know there's an austerity to him. He's a he's a composer and so people like lean in and you can kind of get those views, you know? It's it's like it has the intellectual sauce too. It's like it's like highbrow signifying to listen to and it's also just great music. Like what's funny to me sometimes is like we can be critical of the culture of ourselves for like listening to the thing that's popular or liking the thing like the thing that's popular or viral but it's also viral in some way because it's good. Hopefully. Like in City Pop's case it's like there are very cool things about it that make it popular. Like Ryuichi Sakamoto is amazing.
I grapple with the idea of what a gatekeeper should be because I think when I my my platform starts grow I was quite proudly like oh I'm anti-gatekeeper. It's all music." Because I've always been about sharing my track lists. The music is not mine. If you want to know what I'm into or what I'm playing, of course, because that's the point of why people put out music. But, as you you've said, like, to the race to the bottom for a lot of these things to try to like pull up all of culture to regurgitate. I think the best example for me is like I've never I've chosen actively to never talk about the artist, the British rapper Dean Blunt, because he's to me the most underground. He doesn't do any social media. He doesn't He just puts out his music and disappears, and it's so cool. And I'm like, I'm never going to talk about him because it's not what he would want. And it didn't matter because he's now a TikTok artist because people put him He's vibey. They put him under their videos. People talk about him. And he's a lot bigger than he was 3 years ago because of TikTok. And it didn't matter that I followed his code or not. So, I don't really And I was I was gatekeeping him not because I don't want people to hear it, but because I don't think he'd want people to hear it in that way. And it didn't matter. So, I I Is Is there such thing as a gatekeeper anymore?
It's so that is a really interesting question cuz it's like even if you don't promote something or expose something, someone else will. And then, as soon as the cool thing or the interesting new twist goes online, then it's everywhere because it's so easily distributed so quickly. Uh So, it's like if But But I think this comes back to like what is gatekeeping exactly. It's like there's one form of gatekeeping, which is I'm not going to tell you what I'm into. Like, I'm not going to help you access it. Uh and then there's another form of gatekeeping that's like I am not going to let you, the artist, access these mechanisms of distribution. Um And I mean, maybe neither are good, uh but I think maybe it's just this this question of what kind of filters do we want? How do we want to filter our culture? Cuz we have to do something. Like we can't listen to every song that gets uploaded to YouTube or Spotify. We need help. We need help as consumers. We need guidance in terms of like what's new and interesting, what's you know, what's happening in the world right now. Um and so one form of filtration that we have now is what's popular gets more popular, what gets clicks gets more clicks. Um through through these equations of algorithmic feeds. Another form of filtering is more human filtering where you are following someone's voice, like a trusted voice, like yours to kind of guide you as a consumer through some body of culture that you're interested in. And I think I just want more of that. I want like more access to more human taste and human decision-making in cultural distribution than we currently have. And that involves like direct connection between you, the curator, and the audience. Uh it involves monetization in some way, like a sustainable way to exist as that kind of creator, tastemaker, whatever you want to call it. Um you know, I like I in the book I kind of highlight the indie radio station DJ as like a golden standard in a way of like there is this person at the other end of the radio waves in a studio somewhere picking songs to play, taking calls, generating this like real-time cultural environment for you, the listener. And that just seems like totally magical at this point. Like how do we not appreciate that? It's this real-time vibe curation by one person that's like broadcast over many miles of of airspace. And that to me is like that's the perfect tastemaker cultural distribution. Like one person whose voice you can tune into and you have your person and other people have other people they want to listen to. But there is that access to a human taste, a human voice rather than just like what the algorithmic feed spits out of you.
That is music to my ears as a as a community radio host. Did the graveyard shift at like 2:00 a.m. for probably no one to listen to, but pouring my heart out because that was expression. I didn't there is no like financial reward for doing that. But I guess that's also part of it, too. It can't just be for financial reward.
Yeah, I mean you do it out of passion. And like I think one thing that gets lost is like that act of curation or of construction of a playlist or juxtaposition of two things is an act of creativity and is an expression of passion for culture. Like like the fact that this algorithmic feed is just spitting out juxtapositions at you that make no sense and have no logical coherence and have no emotion is bad. It could be much better. Like it could be it could be human bloggers and curators and like 5% of Facebook's revenue could sustain an army of human curators. It's like Yeah. We could sustain every indie radio station in the country with a percentage of what Spotify makes for just spitting out playlists. And that's it's unfortunate I think that the machines have gotten so much of the capital and the humans have not.
I think it's this is a really healthy discussion for people to open their their minds and their eyes up to how we consume things and how and seek out those people that that are doing that for the right reasons and and rewarding perhaps them for doing such things. Your book seemingly has touched on something. Perhaps I'm reading into it, but seemingly touched on something that we're all thinking about that to conclude I guess I I I really hope that we can start to you know, I guess the people will have to as much as the platforms have to start to move our eyes somewhere else, right?
I think so. I mean shifting where your attention goes and taking it back from a feed is a good act of resistance. Like if you can tune out of the Spotify automated playlist and tune into an indie radio DJ who you then donate, you know, 10 bucks a month to or even go on Apple Music and like listen to I don't know, like John Mayer's handmade playlist. Like if you can just look for what's artisanal and like I I reiterate this metaphor often, but it's like we need the farmers market of culture. We need to like know where it comes from. We need to know the supply chain and we need to buy intentionally good like organic stuff that is good for us and is good for the ecosystem.
That's beautiful. I I'm going to leave it there because I couldn't say that any better myself. That's I hope that I am someone in this market that's selling sourdough. I used to I used to make sourdoughs, so perhaps it's the same thing. Or our little where we have our little, you know, stalls at the farmers market of culture and we're putting out our shingles and like you can subscribe to the Substack or you can buy the book and that's the that's the interaction. I hope and pray for that world, but Kyle Chayka thank you so much. This is a really enjoyable conversation and I appreciate everyone should read the book Filter World and I appreciate your time and for coming on. Thank you so much. was this was so fun. Really enjoyable conversation.
Speaks Volumes is produced by Julia Wayne, the branding is designed by Johnny Sikovs, so make sure you show them some love as well. If you liked this episode, I'd appreciate it if you shared it with a clips or the whole episode or your favorite bits with your friends, family, or loved ones. It means a lot that you share this podcast around and get it to as many ears as possible so it can keep going. And if you like it even more, then I'd appreciate a star rating somewhere, somehow, whether you give me a gold star in person or or on your favorite app. All right, I'll see you in the next episode. This has been Speaks Volumes. My name is Derek G. Bye.