The Culture Journalist

What do TikTok voice, generic “hipster coffee shop” decor, and Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Super Bowl kissing photos have in common? According to Kyle Chayka, a staff writer at The New Yorker, they’re all products of something called “filterworld,” his word for a “vast, interlocking, and yet diffuse network of algorithms that influence our lives today.” His new book, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, zeroes in on the rise of algorithmic recommendation systems—essentially, the equations that govern the specific pieces of content that social media, streaming, and e-commerce platforms decide to show us, and in what order—and how they’re pushing us toward a kind of cultural homogeneity or sameness.Kyle joins us to talk about how exactly algorithm recommendation systems produce this sameness, the kinds of culture that rises to the top on the contemporary internet, and the pros and cons of human gatekeeping versus algorithmic curation. Finally, we discuss tactics for escaping algorithmic culture and reclaiming some of our agency as cultural producers and consumers, both individually and collectively.Support our independent journalism by becoming a paid subscriber at theculturejournalist.substack.com. Paid subscribers receive free bonus episodes every month, along with full essays and culture recommendations.You can also follow The Culture Journalist on Twitter and IG. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

Hey pals. Here’s a development that we never had on our 2024 bingo card: shoegaze is back, and it’s arguably bigger than ever. Andrea first got wind of this in October when she interviewed one of the architects of the genre, which dates back to the 80s and early 90s and is characterized by reverbed-out guitars, heavy feedback, and vocals that sit way back in the mix. On the heels of their fifth album, everything is alive, the U.K. quintet Slowdive is enjoying a level of success that is unprecedented in their 35-year career. They’re selling more music than ever—they recently landed their first-ever Billboard Album Sales Top 10—and their fanbase is skewing noticeably younger. As the band explained to Andrea, a lot of that has to do with one critical factor: Their music has gone viral on TikTok. Slowdive is hardly alone. In December, the Pittsburgh-based music journalist Eli Enis published an exhaustively reported feature for Stereogum called “TikTok Has Made Shoegaze Bigger Than Ever.” While perusing Spotify, he stumbled into a clutch of new shoegaze-inspired artists he’d never heard of — see: wisp, flyingfish, quannnic, and sign crushes motorist — who were wracking up millions of streams. Digging deeper, he discovered that these artists were even more popular on TikTok. Many of them were still in their teens, making tracks on a DAW in their bedroom or between classes at school. And some of them were being offered major-label deals off the back of just a song or two. What is it about shoegaze, a sound that originated roughly four decades ago, that is speaking so much to people in their teens and early 20s? How are platforms like TikTok changing the nature of what a career in music looks like, or what it means to be a fan, or even the sonic elements of a genre like shoegaze that get emphasized or deemphasized? And what do we gain, and lose, in a world where music dreams are made (and dashed) based on inscrutable recommendation algorithms, far removed from the physical scenes and communities that traditionally incubated these subcultural sounds? Eli joins us to talk about what he learned while reporting on the Gen Z-driven shoegaze resurgence and talking to its central players. We also tapped the perspective of The Culture Journalists’s very own Ben Newman, who in addition to being our new audio editor (welcome, Ben!!) also happens to be the drummer in a little band called DIIV, which you probably know in the context of an earlier wave of artists processing shoegaze influences in the 2010s.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theculturejournalist.substack.comWelcome back to the Culture Journalist. To kick off our 2024 programming, we’ve cooked up a special, New Year’s-themed episode for paid subscribers. Elliot Aronow—a fashion and music media veteran and founder of the minor genius newsletter, which focuses on helping artists unlock their “minor genius”—joins us to discuss balancing the pursuit of creative…

Before we dip for a short end-of-year break, it’s time for a music streaming check-in. Our own “Wrapped,” if you will. There’s a lot going on. Just last month, Spotify announced that it would stop paying artists completely for tracks with fewer than 1000 streams — just a few weeks before slashing 17 percent of its workforce (about 1500 people) in its third round of cuts this year. And those aren’t the only changes afoot in the digital music space: Back in October, Bandcamp laid off 50 percent of its staff after being acquired by music licensing company Songtrader, casting a pall of uncertainty over the fate of an important economic lifeline for underground and emerging artists. If, like us, you are confused and disheartened about what this means for independent music, fear not. We’ve got just the guy to help make sense of it all, and maybe even inspire a little hope. His name is Tony Lashley, and not only is he just crazy smart, but he has a unique insider’s view on the machinations of Big Streaming and the intersection of economics and aesthetics, thanks to some serious stints in marketing strategy and operations at both Spotify and Frank Ocean’s Blonded. These days, he’s been busy working on an an independent music-focused streaming platform and community called Marine Snow, which he describes as an attempt to be “hypercuratorial in the age of digital abundance,’” and likens to an A24 for music.Tony joins us for a roundtable on the past, present, and future of the musical commodity in the digital age. He breaks down the confusing economics of the streaming giants, why they keep bleeding money despite dominating the market, and what Spotify’s new royalties structure tells us about where the music internet is headed. We also discuss how our relationship with music is inextricably bound up with values like status and community, what Spotify has in common with H&M (and also mainstream radio), and why the future of music consumption may lie in niche-oriented music platforms like Marine Snow.Follow Tony on Twittter and IGSign up for the Marine Snow waitlistRecommended supplemental reading from Tony:Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change, by David Marx “Spotify: Making profits on thin profit margins” by M Value Investing Research“Layoffs won’t solve spotify’s biggest problem” by Timothy Green“Spotify’s big bet on podcasts is failing, Citi says” by Jessica Bursztynsky“China antitrust: Beijing orders Tencent to end exclusive music licensing deals in a first for the country” by Yujie Xue and Iris DengSupport our independent journalism by becoming a paid subscriber at theculturejournalist.substack.com. Paid subscribers receive free bonus episodes every month, along with full essays and culture recommendations.You can also follow The Culture Journalist on Twitter and IG. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

To celebrate the release of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion of Big Tech by the great tech journo Brian Merchant (Buy it! Read it! It’s terrific!), we’re reupping our conversation with Brian from back in June — which, between the OpenAI shakeup, Hollywood strikes, and the growing number of Big Tech antitrust cases, has only become more relevant since then. It’s also a great complement to our previous episode on the decline of the digital third space, in which we contrast a certain prominent venture capitalist’s techno-optimist manifesto with some of the ideas from Brian’s book.Brian joins us to discuss how the Luddites were actually an early iteration of the labor movement — not anti-tech, but anti-exploitation — the eerie similarities between the systems of automation these workers were up against and AI, and what a 2023 version of the Luddite movement might look like. Hint: It’s already happening, and it has nothing to do with smashing out phones, though you do you.Support our independent journalism by becoming a paid subscriber at theculturejournalist.substack.com. Paid subscribers receive free bonus episodes every month, along with full essays and culture recommendations.Keep it weird with The Culture Journalist on Instagram. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

Back in 2012, a YouTube user called @taia777 posted a 59-minute video of some dreamy white clouds obscured by thorny green vines, soundtracked by the music for Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong’s Quest. It was just another example of the popular trend of video game soundtracks on YouTube, but then something strange happened: Down in the comments section, strangers started spontaneously posting the word “checkpoint”— you know, like the “checkpoint” where a player saves their progress in a game — and anonymously sharing incredibly personal stories and updates from their lives. By 2021, when YouTube finally took the video offline, the thread had grown to more than 25,000 comments. According to Ruby Justice Thelot, a designer, cyberethnographer, artist, and author of a new book called A Cyberarcheology of Checkpoints, this particular internet rabbit hole was a stunning reminder of the lengths that users will go to to find community on the internet — and of the fragility of these so-called “third places” on an internet dominated by a small handful of for-profit platforms. (Disclosure: Emilie helped edit the book).Ruby joins us to discuss the story of Checkpoints, why these sorts of digital third places are so important, and the potential bigger-picture impacts of living one update or copyright claim away from our online histories being lost.We also talk about a recent essay he published with writer Rue Yi about what they’re calling the “balkanization and babelification” of the post-Web 2.0 internet, his thoughts about a controversial “techno-optimist manifesto” written by A16z VC Marc Andreesen, and what’s lost when technologists focus on progress and forward motion at all costs.Pre-order A Cyberarcheology of Checkpoints at https://www.irrelevantpress.com/store/pre-sale-a-cyberarchaeology-of-checkpoints-ruby-thelotSubscribe to The Culture Journalist at theculturejournalist.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

Six months ago, Goldman Sachs published some research valuing the creator economy at $250 billion — a number they say could roughly double over the next five years. But it also found that just 4 percent of creators are considered “professionals,” meaning they pull in more than $100k per year. (Sound familiar?) As Google, Meta, and Amazon square off with regulators over their ownership of more or less everything we do online, it’s easy to forget about the little guy propping this whole thing up: the everyday users who are populating these platforms with all the content.But not Taylor Lorenz. She’s one of the world’s biggest experts on the history of social media (maybe you’ve heard of her) and a tech and culture columnist for The Washington Post. Taylor has been covering internet culture since before it was considered a beat. Now, that beat is her book: Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet charts the rise of the online creator as a new class of creative worker, from early ‘00s mommy bloggers and MySpace “scene queens” to the Instagram influencers and TikTok stars of the present.You can think of it as a people’s history of the creator economy, with a special focus on how platforms are shaped by the everyday people who use them — even as the aforementioned tech companies make it excruciatingly difficult for anyone else to reap the rewards. It’s a perspective that often gets lost in the mainstream technology press, which tends to give founders all of the credit for innovation.To figure out how we got here, we invited Taylor on to join us for a little trip down memory lane, back to a time when selfies (and bangs) were more angled, the web was less aggressively commercial, and surfing the web was more about seeking out the information you needed — not just consuming whatever your timeline happened to spoon up. Pals, we’re talking about the early days of social media — and how platforms like Friendster, MySpace, and even early Facebook and Tumblr laid the foundation for the creator economy as we know it today, while shaping the youth culture of the 2000s and early 2010s.We chat about the aesthetics of the MySpace era, the genesis of the modern creator, and the turning points in early social media that got us to where we are now. Along the way, we discuss whether it’s still possible to see social media as a democratizing force, or if it creates new winners and losers — and why, nearly 20 years after the Facebook newsfeed made everybody’s personal business public, users are retreating into closed communities again.Buy Extremely OnlineFollow Taylor on Substack, Instagram (+ good meme account!), and X (or Twitter or whatever)Read more:Taylor’s column at The Washington Post“Content creators surge past legacy media as news hits a tipping point” by Taylor Lorenz“From mommy bloggers to TikTok stars: How creators built a $250B industry” by Drew Harwell and Taylor Lorenz“Millions work as content creators. In official records, they barely exist.” by Drew Harwell and Taylor Lorenz This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

"A survey of post-pandemic nightlife" with Shawn Reynaldo, creator of the popular First Floor newsletter and author of a recent book on the evolving nature of electronic music culture. They discuss the impact of social media platforms on club culture, the rise of DJ-as-influencer, the decline of musical gatekeepers, and the legacy of Red Bull Music Academy. The conversation also explores the changes in DJ culture, the role of physical spaces, and the absence of choice in post-pandemic nightlife.

If you grew up reading publications like The Village Voice and LA Weekly, you probably remember flipping through pages and pages of edgy, hyper-local journalism, concert and movie listings, and classified ads of both the romantic and non-romantic variety. But what is the role of the alt weekly in the 21st century, when a lot of these functions have been swallowed up by the internet? And, perhaps most critically, how do these publications make any money? In today’s episode, we zoom in on the story of Hell Gate, a subscriber-funded, worker-owned digital news outlet about New York City that is boldly tackling these questions in real time. Launched by a group of five journalists who felt that the city deserved an alt-weekly style publication to fill the void left behind by the Voice, Hell Gate recently celebrated its one-year anniversary, and builds on a growing movement of worker-owned news outlets like Defector Media, Discourse Blog, Racket, and the Colorado Sun. Hell Gate is delightfully, unapologetically, hyper-local. Stories range from meaty topics like policing, labor organizing, and the most recent bizarre utterance from mayor Eric Adams, to we’re-all-thinking-it niche fare like the confounding nuances of DMV license plate design, weed bodega aesthetics and why people keep seeing gross viral food recipes during their subway commute. There’s even a column devoted to the state of New York’s public restrooms. Helping Hell Gate chart its path are writer-editors Adlan Jackson and Katie Way, two talented writers who cut their teeth writing for outlets like The New Yorker, Pitchfork, and VICE and are now leading the publication’s arts and culture coverage. They join us to talk about Hell Gate’s origin story, how the worker-owned model works, and what it’s like to run a daily publication about a city with a population of 8 million with just seven people. We also discuss what happens to arts and music communities when local news organizations disappear; how the role of alternative publications has evolved in the internet era; and how local media helps us touch grass amid the digital dysfunction of city life.Support our independent journalism by becoming a paid subscriber at theculturejournalist.substack.com. Paid subscribers receive free bonus episodes every month, along with full essays and culture recommendations.Keep it weird with The Culture Journalist on Instagram. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe

For most of the so-called “content creators” we know, marketing is a necessary evil. You make the work you want to make, then wait until the last possible moment to figure out how you’re going to get people to click on it. But what would it look like if you became super obsessed with the marketing side of the equation and let it become the driving force of the entire creative process? What if you zeroed in on a single distribution platform, spent years studying how it worked, then built an entire creative practice based entirely around the tips and tricks you knew would attract a snowballing number of eyeballs to your work?If you’re wondering what the resulting content would look like, well… it might look something like the videos of a 25-year-old YouTuber named Jimmy Donaldson, who recently surpassed the Swedish edgelord PewDiePie to become the biggest YouTuber of all time. Even if you haven’t seen his videos, or stumbled across his chocolate brand, you’ve probably heard his YouTube moniker: MrBeast. As of this writing, he has 171 million subscribers and counting.Donaldson owns an entire neighborhood in his hometown of Greenville, North Carolina, where he has dozens of employees working around the clock to produce big-budget spectacles with names like “$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life” and “I Spent 50 Hours Buried Alive.” His videos often revolve around random acts of charity — one of his early breakouts involved him walking up to a homeless person and giving him $10,000 — and he has spoken at length about how attention-grabbing headlines and thumbnails are the engine of his success. If you know somebody who works in actual marketing, they’d probably tell you that MrBeast is the future of media. Between the budgets, the audience numbers, and the sheer physical scale of many of these spectacles — not to mention his spin-off channels and a whole sub-economy of reaction videos and YouTube tutorials — the world of MrBeast is so big and bewildering that it takes a special kind of dedication to explain it all. Lucky for you, The New York Times Magazine recently published a delightfully brain-bending story called “How MrBeast Became the Willy Wonka of YouTube” by one of our favorite writers on technology and culture. His name is Max Read, and he’s a screenwriter and journalist who has a terrific newsletter on Substack called Read Max. Max began work on the article after a MrBeast video called “1000 Blind People See for the First Time” went “bad viral” on Twitter, sparking questions about the “authenticity” of Donaldson’s super-sized brand of altruism (he paid for their glaucoma surgery) and differing generational attitudes towards the mercenary tactics he uses to pull these stunts off. He joins us to discuss what he calls the “unstoppable flywheel of charity, spectacle, and growth” that powered Donaldson’s rise, and the dystopian realities of the creator economy that his tactics lay bare. We also dig into what makes MrBeast’s relationship with his audience unique (hint: according an academic Max spoke to, it has something to do with a media studies concept called the “audience commodity”), and how even though a lot of millennials can’t stand him, there’s a little bit of MrBeast in all of us. Support our independent journalism by becoming a paid subscriber at theculturejournalist.substack.com. Paid subscribers receive free bonus episodes every month, along with full essays and culture recommendations.Keep it weird with The Culture Journalist on Instagram. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe