Mass Consumption, the Algorithm and How Capitalism Created Content

Words: Mahika Dhar

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A couple of years into the 2000s, methods of consumerism changed in favour of an easy, numbing gluttony. The MacBook was released, Amazon transformed from a bookseller into a thriving online marketplace, Bush told Americans to shop more, and Keeping Up With The Kardashians aired on E! The seemingly endless innovations contrasted with the harsh reality of an increasingly fractured and brutalised world, where 9/11 shook the world and the signs of a massive global recession rose. In retrospect, it's hard to think that no one could feel this shift, that no one saw the centre refusing to hold, as it had so many times before. The answers to these harsh interruptions of reality were, of course, to bend one's head in prayer and look downward to your screens, where a vaster, and somehow realer world awaited you. The answer was content.

In the 2010s, art began its shift into content. Streaming services made music, films, and literature more accessible than ever — seemingly for free! At the same time, the internet bubbled into a space of hypomanic gluttony, propelled by media outlets like Buzzfeed that churned out articles, quizzes, and videos that steadily decreased in logic but exponentially increased in frequency. Companies were quick to recognise the homogenisation of culture and capitalise on it, marking the beginning of the attention economy that transformed enjoyment into absolute engrossment. But to keep people online, the internet experience had to be seamless and endlessly entertaining, and giants like Google and Facebook pinpointed the solution as data collection. 
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The nuggets of information, entertainment, and opinions that users would engage with began to be termed "content", a hollow and vague word that perfectly encapsulated the passive and addictive relationship between the nugget and the person. By now, it's not just tech giants or social media conglomerates who care about content; every company — big or small — banks on it. As Bill Gates predicted in 1996, content is king.

A few months ago, I quit my job in a digital marketing team for a well known publishing house. I was working under a vertical called the "Content Engine", supposedly the first of its kind. My work involved scouring the internet for trends and replicating them while plugging in our books. The primary objective was to never stop posting. This January, Twitter and Instagram were filled with the Ram Mandir inauguration in India — the hotly contested building of a temple thought to be the birthplace of Ram, after Hindu vigilantes tore down the mosque that previously stood there. The Ram Mandir was — and continues to be — deeply political and violent. For the BJP government and its supporters, it's a symbol of Hindutva success over "infiltrators". For everyone else, it's a horrific tragedy. But because everyone was talking about it, and Twitter hashtags rose, my boss wanted Content on it. Several Instagram carousels and tweets on “Lessons to Learn from Lord Ram” were green-lit. The backlash was immediate but irrelevant. After all, it's just content. It can simultaneously never be taken seriously, all while dictating the flow of our emotions, thoughts, and purchases; while dictating our lives. 

The idea of content goes hand in hand with overexposure, exemplified by the sudden boom of Taylor Swift followed by an instantaneous public pushback. While the Eras Tour held the top position of most Twitter feeds, it was closely followed by growing rage against Swift's private jet usage. Swifties who found something akin to a religious experience in her music were always sandwiched on the feed between those who thought it was vile and cringe.

By now, content expected to elicit extremes of emotions does the opposite — it just exhausts us. Kyle Chayka notes the limits of personalisation in his new book, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, stating,  "And yet for all that data, algorithmic feeds oftentimes misunderstand us, connecting us to the wrong people or recommending the wrong kinds of content, encouraging habits that we don't want."

It's a frustrating cycle: if you like something, you'll see more content on it until you begin to detest the subject, in which case your anger will create more content. When Sabrina Carpenter's Espresso became a global hit, Spotify users who didn't listen to Carpenter were ceaselessly recommended her new single, Please, Please, Please. The results were bizarre: It was repeatedly played after the usual suspects (such as Olivia Rodrigo and Clairo), but it was also included in automatic playlists of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Frank Sinatra. 

Content brought us an algorithmic, pleasurable wave of numbness, but when everything is content, the things we engage with are somehow flatter in their personalisation, less meaningful or memorable. Chayka analyses this phenomenon, arguing that content has an ultimately flattening effect, where everything starts to feel familiar, creating a counterintuitively bored audience as a result of hyper-personalisation: "Filterworld culture is ultimately homogenous, marked by a pervasive sense of sameness even when its artefacts aren't literally the same." The content-ification of everything works to its own detriment. The goal was simple: cram feeds with as much stuff as possible. Make it sugary and colourful and quick. Make more of it. Track what users like and what they don't, and filter the feed accordingly. 

But to see variations of what you've already viewed is endlessly dull. One can only remain passive for so long, until your face drifts from the screen into something more exciting. I felt this exact chain of events in my personal life, regarding a relationship with Instagram that turned from doom scrolling to complete apathy. Almost overnight, I was suddenly bored of it. I had seen everything — or at least variations of it — and the space could offer me nothing new or exciting. The app is on my phone but I haven't opened it in about a week. When I checked my new daily average, to the wary awe of my friends, it was zero minutes. The flatness of content becomes both an equaliser and a dilutor. Everyone can engage with it, but never too deeply. Spotify is already paying for the content malaise, with users aching for the mixtape pleasure of something handcrafted, something that holds the possibility of intense dislike, something that resists apathy.

To a certain degree, content begets content, but after a point, it overtakes itself like an ouroboros or an entity that is ultimately only amusing for itself. In a way, it's a relief to see that the path of content seems to lead to self-exhaustion. Perhaps when this happens, when all the algorithms misunderstand us, we'll return to offbeat apps and niche community servers, to ourselves and one another.