You are better than what you follow
Your Netflix and Instagram feeds pander to your worst selves
Today, we have access to an infinite stream of content and information, served to us on a platter with personalized recommendations. How is that then that so often, the feeling you get at the end of an afternoon spent watching Netflix’s recommendations or scrolling through Instagram feeds is frustration or cringe, rather than satisfaction or enjoyment?
The reason, if you come to think of it, should not surprise you—these platforms solve for keeping you engaged on them for more ad money. Now, what keeps us engaged is ironically not necessarily that gives us enduring joy, but rather that gives us instant gratification and panders to the worst version of one’s self — our guilty pleasures. Unless you are careful of course to sidestep that trap.
The habit-inducing attention economy is not new (think fast foods) but this time we are up against AI-powered recommendation engines nearly perfected over the last decade. It takes effort to find content outside the recommendations. Our will power reserves cannot match up to the endless stream of instant gratification opportunities.
I, for example, really enjoy watching a critically acclaimed courtroom drama, a crime psychology thriller or a sci-fi fantasy. When in mood for something lighter, I’d watch a stand-up show or a documentary. On some bad days though, I would just watch a terrible sitcom or romcom (the ‘so bad but I still watched it’ kind). And, following a few such times, my Netflix feed would start to over-index on binge-worthy (cringe-worthy?) shows that were ‘so bad that I actually stopped watching it’. My wife saw her feed taken over by voyeuristic reality TV dramas, after having seen a few cooking, gardening and design related reality TV competitions (that she saw for the creative elements, not for the reality TV drama). This is not limited to Netflix - my Instagram’s Search page started featuring IGTV videos that glamourize traditional fashion or beauty standards after I watched some fitness videos there. The worst part is that it’s hard to notice when you’re falling into the trap.
When I talked to friends about how the recommendation engines are ‘broken’, the most common response was that the recommendations are meant to be just a reflection of your likes and viewing history. Implicitly what they were saying is that You Are What You Follow — as if one’s content feed was a true representation of their taste in content. Here’s a nuance that they miss:
Even if each particular content recommendation in my feed is based on my likes and views, the sum total of these recommendations often turn out to be a rather skewed picture of my content preferences overall. And that is because my feed misses those content recommendations that should have been present based on my likes and views, but perhaps do not drive the same engagement levels. For example, my wife’s feed is missing other cooking shows that she would enjoy more than a sneak into the lives of LA real estate agents that are Selling Sunsets; however she will still likely end up watching the latter (at least for a bit) because it was on her recommendations much more prominently than was “Salt, Acid, Fat, Heat”
That’s why it’s not that we are what we follow or what our feeds show us — we are better than that. However, we do run the risk of being the one we follow if we are not careful.
How to sidestep the trap
When I realised how I had descended into discovering and watching content that I would consider poor taste, I decided to start teaching the algorithm more actively. I started to upvote titles that I like and downvote those that I did not. This was not limited to titles I had seen on Netflix, but across all titles I had ever seen. I also actively started to delete distasteful content from my watch history, and added good titles I wanted to watch to My List. A combination of these worked wonders to completely change my feed. I did a similar housekeeping on Twitter where I unfollowed anyone I didn’t really care about (e.g. some actors and politicians), and actively sought pages I wanted to follow. I turned my Instagram into primarily a source for news and standup comedy.
As with most things, this kind of spring cleaning is not a one-off exercise. I have realized I need keep putting in the time and effort to clean my digital feeds, and also to adapt to the flavor of the season (I might follow more American news during election season, but will also unfollow most of those later). It feels like a lot of effort for something such as content consumption that’s typically come to be a passive activity nowadays, but I found it to be worth the value. In fact, come to think of it, our level of passivity seems to be directly linked to how much the algorithms come to control our screen time.