From Bloomberg, taken by Hodinkee.
In 1898, Maria Skłodowska-Curie and her husband, Pierre, discovered radium, a beautiful element that emitted rays, causing it to glow. Wrist watch companies mixed this new material with paint to make their watch faces glow in the dark. The Radium Luminous Material Corporation sang the praises of radium while marketing their cutting-edge timepieces: “Thanks to constant laboratory work, the power of this most unusual of elements is at your disposal. Through the medium of Undark, radium serves you safely and surely.” Thanks to this exciting new technology, the watch industry was revolutionized and modern man stood triumphant over the molecules he had bridled.
This story does not end with a technophilic moral. The lovely glowing radium on the shiny new watches did not represent the American dream, nor did it herald a new era of radioactive luxury. Instead, rich men grew richer, and the women making the watches grew sick and felt their bones soften as their gums bled and their teeth fell out. Radium was not a wonder molecule. It was poison, it was dangerous, and it was painted on the jewelry and skin and teeth of the unwitting before they even knew what it was.
The story of radium is a parable, and it should serve to chasten the techno-accelerationist who sings the praises of social media and the algorithm. Algorithm refers specifically to the functions found within short-form video social media apps like TikTok and Instagram, which use data like time spent watching certain videos, search engine data, and followings to calculate the best way to capture your attention further.
Many people express how much they love “their algorithm.” They speak of it like an assistant, a pet which brings them choice morsels of entertainment. The algorithm at face value is a function to increase your own personal enjoyment and pleasure while using your social media app of choice—it gives you what you want.
This is the novel luminosity on the watch face of social media that we have become attracted to. Beneath this specious glow, however, there is a sinister separating of ourselves occurring. The permeation of the algorithm in our lives is fundamentally shaping us, transforming our psyches. It is mutating our nature, our appetites and our relationships.
The donation of our attention to the diversion of short-form video and social media is not without consequence. It has a secret cost, one which people pay dearly and often unwittingly.
As for myself, the algorithm’s alteration of my psyche manifested itself in a simple way: I used to be completely unable to read a single chapter of a book in one sitting. My attention span was almost fully destroyed. My consumption of inane amusement had altered my brain, making me crave more of what I was being fed, faster and stronger. My nature had been shaped by the algorithm. It was only after plucking out my eye, after completely eliminating social media from my life, that I found even an inch of recovered ground. Even now I still carry the psychological effects of a media addiction.
That disease, deriving from repeated and habitual media use, was only indicative of another, more subtly sinister effect of social media on my brain, one that even now scares me to death.
As I gave my fullest attention to the online world of social media, the algorithm began to shape not only my nature, but also my appetites. That is the macabre brilliance of the algorithm; it gives the viewer exactly what they want, until what they want is the algorithm itself. The algorithm tells them that it is a means to the end of entertainment and pleasure, but in reality, it is a means to the end of itself. It exists to make people desire what it has to show them, and so it exists to enslave people to it.
This is the terrifying and true purpose of the algorithm: ultimately, whoever controls the strings and dials of the algorithm is able to control the viewer’s desires, their sensibilities, and their loves.
Control itself is the final and penultimate ethos of the algorithm. As folks practice mindless scrolling, they become the commodity which corporations like Meta and Bytedance trade in. They are selling attention to the highest bidder. This transactional characteristic of social media impacts relationships.
Dr. Luke Irwin highlighted the commercial nature of social media and how this starts to shape us even further: “We’re not so much just consumers, we’re opting into a system where we can consume information. … We are also presenting ourselves as consumable.” Dr. Irwin’s perspective on social media was particularly attentive to the relational impacts of the mercantile aspect of the algorithm: “If you're seeing people and what people are saying next to advertising, then there will start to be some overlap in how you understand those things.”
Irwin points out that as one uses a platform that is inherently commercial, they start to pay attention to people only for “what we can get from them and how we can ultimately come to possess them.” This profound shift in relational capacities is treacherous. “We really struggle to talk with each other as people. Surely in the way we present ourselves online and the way algorithms are presenting information to us based on our habits … [The corporations] aren't interested in fostering relationships. They are interested in getting more users.” Irwin continued, “Even if that means people hating each other, or portraying themselves in increasingly degrading ways, that doesn't matter as long as there are more people using these apps. The best interests of humanity are not at the heart of why these apps exist.”
We are pliable creatures, susceptible to every whim and wind on this earth we sojourn upon. The algorithm, manifested in TikTok, Instagram and any other social media app, is shaping us right now. It is changing our psychological nature, altering our desires, and corrupting our relationships. We will be conformed to something whether that is what we consume, or what we give our attention to. This will determine what image we are shaped into.
Viewers, perhaps decry the complacency as you catch yourselves quaffing the chalice of social media. Rail against the sickness secreted in the glimmering baubles the algorithm gifts us. We love the pretty things that glow, and we ignore how they are writhing under our skin, unknitting the little things in our bones and brains, changing us while we ask for more.