Social smokers | Turning content into digital cigarettes

Algorithms get to decide not only what we see, but also what we create and share. What are the consequences for life discovery?

Ever since I laid my fingers on a keyboard, I was in love with reading Wikipedia. I would literally read myself to sleep - and I still do.

I can lose myself into the deepest of rabbit holes, it matters little whether it’s the history of Polymerase Chain Reaction or the life of the creator of my favorite animated show; what matters is that I get to decide “where“ to wander with my nightly reads. 

But when I read Medium, for instance, I notice that the hyperlinks have been constructed to increase my time spent inside a very specific, albeit intricate, web of content.

Hold on - I get it. If you want to make a living off of content you need to play the game - there are far too many stimuli out there to compete with, and it is unreasonable to expect quick wins.

However, while personalized feed is what makes it easy to digest so much information, we are losing something - our ability to discover information that is outside of our “comfort zone”: which means that we have folded the purpose of the internet on itself. 

Living in a perpetual echo chamber

The point is that with these algorithms, you spend a considerable amount of time being exposed to:

1. Politics

2. Economics

3. Music

4. Scientific takes

5. Societal issues

6. Global policy

And in the end, you have little control over what information you are effectively receiving. 

You won’t pick up a book in a store, you won’t buy a selection of newspapers, and you most likely won’t ask experts their opinion.

What you do is the farthest thing from information research, in fact. 

The modern “reader” (or rather, content consumer) is always busy, strapped for time, and dependent on consumer technology. It only makes sense that they consume content through their devices. 

Technology and Feed ranking

A book won’t place its best chapters in the beginning, an article won’t give you its juiciest part right from the start, and a film won’t trigger any feelings unless the spectator watches it all. 

The dopamine released at the end of content consumption is not misplaced. Stories do help us as a species because they let us store valuable knowledge in our collective conscience. There is a reason why stories have battle-tested structures. Cognitive narratology is a relatively new branch of literary science, but it is something we are going to see a lot more of in the coming years. This is due to the proliferation of content, which is made possible by GEN AI. More and more people will be consuming content, because personalized content will be easier to create, distribute, and consume. 

When we hear a story that is very “sticky”¹, we are captivated by the narration, but it’s not just that. We catch a glimpse of ourselves in the story. We ask ourselves, "What would I do in that particular situation?” - our imagination surfs of the waves blown by the narrative structure. 

But there is no such structure in aggregators. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Youtube Shorts - these are all places that deliver a quick dopamine fix with every piece of content you consume. 

Content Aggregators rank content through algorithmic selection and push creators to:

1. Follow trends

2. Create content that is extremely easy to consume

3. Become obsessed with their contents’ performance, thus reinforcing this loop

As a result, viewers:

1. Spend time consuming content that delivers a quick dopamine fix

2. Get very little value from the content they consume

And this is because:

1. The reward mechanism of narration is hacked to deliver a dopamine fix even in the absence of real, narrative value

If you feel drained after doom scrolling it’s because your reward system was hijacked to favor the consumption of content that delivers little to no value. You effectively got high on fast content. 

I don’t believe in god but…

…Jesus did speak some facts.

Among my favorite quotes of his is: “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God,’” Matthew 4:4.

Why did Jesus say this?

Because humans need more than food to survive. They need culture. They need to be continuously reinvigorated in their self identification as a piece of a larger community.

All cultures have rituals and rules - and they all need content to transfer knowledge. Mythological representations of human concepts, intricate cosmologies, legends - these are all useful for creating a sense of identity. 

In the modern era, wars have been used as a powerful source of meaning for defending the concept of sovereign nations, for instance. Think of World War II - at the expense of the defeated and the dead, the West has created a powerful sense of justice centered on democratic values and tolerance. 

And this is why we have all this content about World War II still going around, almost a century later. Not all conflicts receive this degree off attention.

Culture through technology?

The fact that we consume content on new devices shouldn’t be cause for concern.

However, the fact that we consume content through a personalized feed system that influences creators as well as consumers, is a big problem. 

One may argue that free will doesn’t really exist, and therefore you shouldn’t be concerned with this. I refuse to accept this point of view in the most categorical way. 

Technology helps shape cultures in ways that are hard to deny: think of how the car culture of America came to exist. Hint: it was thanks to cars. But what type of culture are we building around the emotional detachment that social media breeds?

We no longer care for stories or interesting things. We have effectively accepted our personalized feeds as our digital pacifiers - it is a new addiction that resembles a codependent relationship a lot more than a substance problem. 

What type of culture are we building in the West? Our ever-increasing confidence that we can shape our own destiny is not matched by real freedom. We are just free to rot away on our couches, chasing a dopamine fix that won’t give us any satisfaction, effectively turning a fun video into a digital cigarette.

The need for propaganda-like content

A french philosopher called Jacques Ellul explains in his book, Propaganda, that:

“[...] propaganda standardizes current ideas, hardens prevailing stereotypes, and furnishes thought patterns in all areas. Thus it codifies social, political, and moral standards." [...]”²

America is blighted by the polarization of opinions and this is due to how social media algorithms are conceived. 

Platforms need to:

1. Maximize content consumption

2. Maximize content output 

And this is because they need to retain users on the screen as much as possible, in order to create more occasions for generating sales (think of TikTok Shop).

Once these algorithms influence the way content is created (and in this analysis we are completely disregarding the role of human censorship) and do so without human intervention, we are effectively putting the algorithms in the driver seat. 

Our culture is, in fact, not a human product anymore, but rather a hybrid of what the algorithms of the major sharing platforms want you to see (AND CREATE!). 

Ellul also states that:

“Propaganda eliminates one of the causes of tension by driving man straight into such a climate of opinion. This greatly simplifies his life and gives him stability, much security, and a certain satis-faction.

At the same time, this crystallization closes his mind to all new ideas. The individual now has a set of prejudices and beliefs, as well as objective justifications. His entire personality now revolves around those elements. Every new idea will therefore be troublesome to his entire being. He will defend himself against it because it threatens to destroy his certainties. He thus actually comes to hate everything opposed to what propaganda has made him acquire. Propaganda has created in him a system of opinions and tendencies which may not be subjected to criticism. That system leaves no room for ambiguity or mitigation of feelings; the individual has received irrational certainties from propaganda, and precisely because they are irrational, they seem to him part of his personality. He feels personally attacked when these certainties are attacked.”³

This is the problem that America has exported to the rest of the world inside of its technological trojan horse (which we all love, don’t get me wrong -I am effectively typing this on my Mac). Political polarization is nothing new, but its pervasiveness is a byproduct of how technology exposes us to a continuous stream of information that needs to be consumed by people on either side of the political spectrum - there is no in-between.

Therefore, people want to see what already resonates with them or they feel physically attacked, and this makes them feel bad, which is bad for user retention. We cannot survive without this type of content once we have been exposed to it. We would be giving up part of our social identity and, while possible, it is far from being an optimal solution.

Full circle (kinda).

Life discovery can be re-discovered

The thing about technology, modern life, and propagandesque content is that we cannot do much about it. It’s the way the world is today, and, for better or worse, it came to be this way for reasons that are beyond our control. What we can still control is the effect that this new environment has on our psyche and our way of thinking about societal problems. 

When we go to work and detach ourselves to focus more, and perhaps we use social media as a means of escape, at least for a moment, we should remember that nothing is what it seems on the internet. There is a very specific reason for why you are consuming that very piece of information; it could be excellent SEO work, or it’s just your personalized TikTok feed.

But when something makes you angry, or happy, or sad - ask yourself: why is this making me feel like this? How much time am I spending on this app/ What does my feed look like?

When was the last time I picked up a book just because it sounded nice after skimming through a few pages, no reviews involved?

When was the last time you did something because it felt like a good idea, without technological intervention?

When was the last time you entered a restaurant without checking the reviews?

When was the last time you went to see a film without checking the trailer?

You don’t need to live in the past, but sometimes we need to remember how life can be discovered to truly appreciate all the technological comfort we are used to.

The beauty of the unknown is still out there, go chase it!

1. Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. 2008. Made to Stick. London, England: Arrow Books.

2. Page 163, lines 4-7 - Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, 1965. Text.

3. Page 166, lines 1-22 - Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, 1965. Text.