Several years ago I noticed that online algorithms came in two sharply different types.
Commercial algorithms do a splendid job of judging your taste in things. When you buy something online, you immediately see ads for appropriately similar things. The ads don’t steer you into the most popular product right now, or a product that Apple wants to push. Most of the ads are for things I might want to buy. This hasn’t changed. Ads for things are still carefully aimed.
Political and cultural algorithms were universally wrong. My political views are perfectly clear and uncomplicated, unchanged since 2008. In one word, FDR. I always write from the same viewpoint, in this blog and in comments elsewhere.
My cultural tastes are less simple, but easy to determine from what I download. Youtube’s “for you” and Substack’s algorithm never hand me anything remotely appropriate. They always want me to see the same old National Review neocons in politics, and NYC assholes in popular culture.
New thought: The political algorithms can’t offer me other FDR fans because there aren’t any.
I’m the only one. Repooflicans have always hated FDR, even though some of them (eg Harding and Henry Ford) were working in harmony with FDR’s purposes. Modern Democrats hate FDR because he wasn’t woke. He worked to serve ALL poor people, even the ones who are currently hated because they don’t keep up with the latest weird cultural fashions. He especially helped farmers and southerners and working class types, who are totally intolerable and alien to modern Democrats.
I’m not unique at all in culture and entertainment. Youtube has plenty of items I like. That’s where I get them! Substack has at least a few fans of similar entertainment or old tech. Why do both insist on feeding me things I never want?
I guess it’s all about Engagement. Engagement is the opposite of Persuasion.
Persuaders make the customer feel respected and important, find out what he wants, and give him more of what he wants. Engagers make the customer feel like shit, find out what he hates, and give him more of what he hates.
Trouble is, Engagement doesn’t build a business that lasts. Journalists and Hollywood fucked around and found out. They’ve been Engaging for 40 years, and now they’re on an unstoppable downward slide. Social media are starting to find out, as their audiences are starting to move away.
Polistra's Mill 