When I started getting over a million views on my TikTok videos, I saw a new perspective of how digitally-mediated human connection transforms into something simultaneously more expansive and more fragmented than I've ever seen before.
It all started (and will and end, I believe) with the infamous For You Page algorithm. The novel predictive distribution of content, which relies on testing engagement with a fraction of a group before distributing to the whole group, then fractions of adjacent groups before doing the same there, is still just as "accurate" as it was when we all first started using it. The algorithm knows exactly who I am, we have heard. The algorithm knows me more than I know myself.
Yes, the algorithm can predict what content you are most likely to engage with—and it does it with such specificity that many people feel like it is diagnosing them and their personalities. Still, underneath this predictive efficiency, there's a more complex story about how we inherit and perpetuate patterns of connection and disconnection across generations—now fully accelerated and amplified by digital platforms. Maybe TikTok was a test-bed; maybe it is (was?) the denouement of algorithmic curation...
One perspective of the algorithm that's interesting to consider is the perspective of "creators"—people who primarily create and publish content on the platform rather than consume content created by others. (Though the Venn diagram of creators and consumers tends to overlap a lot, there are definitely some [like me] who used TikTok primarily to publish content rather than interact with and consume other people's content). My own journey from 20k to over 150k followers in a matter of a few weeks put me face-to-face with a peculiar form of digital intimacy that I hadn't had the unfortunate privilege of experiencing up until recently.
The comments sections on my videos were microcosms of today's human socialization patterns: some people sought genuine engagement, and many seemed to copy and paste performative rhetoric (that were very likely bots). Others took to using sharp language like weapons, or to argue and push back against what was a growing cultivation environment for fascist ideology. My research into misinformation and disinformation online led me to believe that most of what I was reading was the product of engagement farming, disinformation campaigns, or both. But there were people, actual people, inside my comments. People reach out still telling me how helpful my videos have been in private conversations, and even now I still get emails from readers who share how they've managed to more confidently deal with people in their lives who vehemently disagree with them politically, emotionally, spiritually...
Whether people were being nice or rude, their intentions good or bad, one thing was for sure: each interaction revealed some kind of hidden architecture of belonging and alienation that shape our online experiences. The sexually charged hostility toward me, always from men, always performative, pointed to something deeper than just trolling or being an asshole. It suggested a inherited grammar of interaction, likely modeled to them in childhood by emotionally immature adults and now finding new avenues of expression on social media.
My background as an educator had trained me to see every interaction as an opportunity for growth, every question as a potential moment of transformation. Hence why I had to leave TikTok! The poor interaction design of the comment system ensures, as I wrote about earlier, the utter collapse of context:
TikTok's platform seems specifically engineered for context collapse. Each swipe erases the cognitive framework built for the previous video, replacing it with fresh demands for attention and understanding. The platform's design doesn't just make this context-switching inevitable—it makes it compulsory. There's no pause button for processing, no space for connection-making. Just an endless stream of disconnected moments, each one washing away the last.
It's hard to teach, let alone share structured information, on a platform that actively inhibits an iterative approach to building complex ideas all within a particular context. Not because the platform affordances to me as a creator inhibit my ability to teach or share knowledge, but rather, the platform is designed to be used in such a way that context has an upper limit of complexity:
Can people learn something new from TikTok? Of course they can. But learning and awareness spread through TikTok is happening despite the platform's design, not because of it. New things we're made aware of on TikTok are a product of both creators and viewers working harder than necessary to use a platform designed to sell products and confirmation bias as a means of transferring critical information about the world around us and the ideas we find our lives enmeshed in.
And on Sundays I elude the eyes
And hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire
Where my white-haired uncle waits
From "Red Barchetta" by Rush
Around the Net
- Enrique Ray examines the complex interplay between nostalgia and disillusionment in our contemporary digital landscape, focusing on the "Y2K aesthetic" and "Flow 2K" movements that romanticize early-2000s internet culture. Through a weaving of cultural criticism, personal narratives, and academic perspectives, he explores how our longing for a "kinder, more human" internet reflects deeper anxieties about the current state of digital spaces. Ray's analysis culminates in a nuanced meditation on digital sovereignty and collective responsibility, suggesting that while the internet was never truly the utopia we remember, its future remains unwritten and within our power to shape.
But for those who had an economic interest in the extension of capitalism, the internet has become exactly what they wanted, which is not so different from television. The rest of us experience it as a conflictive space, where there are many disappointing things but which always regenerates and opens up new possibilities. The internet does something very cruel and difficult to bear emotionally: at first it disappoints you, but then it gives you hope again.
Enrique Rey
Archive.is link (non-paywalled version)
- Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba look at the friction points of movement building, and make the case that effective organizing requires us to work beyond our comfort zones and ideological bubbles. Drawing from experiences in prison organizing, recovery spaces, and street protests, they map out how movement participants must learn to navigate tension and disagreement rather than seeking perfect political alignment. The authors push past conventional wisdom about solidarity, arguing that the scale of our current crises demands we learn to organize not just with those we trust and understand, but with those whose politics and personalities we may find challenging—a message that feels particularly urgent as movements face increasing pressure to demonstrate both tactical unity and ideological purity.
It is no exaggeration to say that the whole world is at stake, and we cannot afford to minimize what that demands of us... But broader movements are struggles, not sanctuaries. They are full of contradiction and challenges we may feel unprepared for.
Kelly Hayes
- Ed Zitron confronts what he calls "the Rot Economy"—a system where tech companies systematically degrade user experiences in an endless pursuit of growth, transforming our digital lives into a maze of manipulative interfaces and extractive design choices (sound familiar?). At one point he reveals an experiment with a $238 laptop that exemplifies the digital poverty imposed on millions, showing how tech leaders have betrayed the democratic promise of early internet culture in favor of surveillance capitalism. In an era where digital interaction is no longer optional but necessary for modern life, Zitron argues that we are witnessing an unprecedented form of mass exploitation—one so pervasive that most users have been conditioned to blame themselves rather than the architects of their digital despair.
You are the victim of a con — one so pernicious that you've likely tuned it out despite the fact it's part of almost every part of your life. It hurts everybody you know in different ways, and it hurts people more based on their socioeconomic status. It pokes and prods and twists millions of little parts of your life, and it's everywhere, so you have to ignore it, because complaining about it feels futile, like complaining about the weather.
Edward Zitron