Thinking about social media vs other selective experiences. Substack is absolutely tiring, and I only spend a few minutes at a time before I can’t take it any more. Quora is much less tiring.
Both have lots of crap I don’t want and a little valuable reading material. Why is one better?
Comparing with other selections brings it out. A grocery store also has thousands of items I don’t want, and a dozen items I do want.
Here’s the difference. In the grocery I know where to find the dozen things I always buy. I can walk in, go directly to the first item, fetch it, skip past the aisles with nothing I want, go down the correct aisle to the next item and go immediately to its location.
Quora’s algorithm is more like the grocery store. It emphasizes the items I like, offers more of them, and skips over the items I never want.
Substack’s algorithm forcefully pushes my cart down the aisles I dislike, no matter how often I tell it that I want to skip those aisles. No! You can’t skip the meat aisle! We know you’re vegy because you’ve mentioned it in our comments. Everyone must eat raw meat! Paleo diet! You must go down the liquor aisle! We know you stopped drinking a long time ago because you’ve mentioned it in our comments. But don’t you really want to take another little drinkie again? Just one?
Polistra's Mill 