Dying Breed Dialogues: Kyle Chayka on Escaping Algorithmic Sameness

Why coffee shops all look the same, the real meaning of curation, where to find serendipity in a standardized world, and . . . do you really like wide legs pants?

Photo courtesy of Josh Sisk

One of the topics I’m exploring here on Dying Breed is how our digital technologies influence everything from the way we think to how we socialize.

One of my favorite writers exploring the interaction between technology and culture is Kyle Chayka, a staff writer at The New Yorker.

In his book Filterworld, Kyle explores how social media algorithms have homogenized everything in our our culture — from coffee shop aesthetics and clothing styles, to writing, and even human faces.

I talked to Kyle about the monoculture of Filterworld, how algorithms designed to offer personalized content end up giving us all the same thing, and what that does to us individually and as a society.

We also explored ways you can push back against Filterworld and escape its life-flattening algorithms by being more intentional about the art, writing, and music you consume, including why you need to start listening to old-school DJs again.

Plus, Kyle gives his personal recommendations on books and philosophers to check out to help you navigate Filterworld and how to inject more serendipity into your life.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You explore how algorithmic recommendation systems are homogenizing culture. When did you first notice this happening?

I think I first started noticing it in the middle of the 2010s, probably 2015, 2016. Instagram was becoming this huge new cultural force all across the world, and a lot of what we consumed was starting to be filtered through social media.

What I saw as I was traveling as a freelance journalist were all these independent coffee shops that looked the same; whether I was in Tokyo or LA or Berlin or Beijing, I would always run into the same coffee shop decor. There’s the white subway tiles on the walls, mid-century modern furniture, wide reclaimed wood tables, rough ceramic vessels with cappuccinos, latte art, avocado toast, hanging Edison bulbs, succulents. There might be some lo-fi chill hop beats on the stereo. The thing perpetuating these trends was Instagram and this new multimedia internet.

Where else did you see this homogenization besides coffee shops?