YouSaid · the spoken record

Kyle Chayka

lines on the record: 102
first: 2024-03-11
most recent: 2024-03-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Being more thoughtful is good start. I mean, I think what I came out of it with was like. You want to know that you like what you like because you like it, not just because it was recommended to you and exposed to you repeatedly in a feed. Thinking about your personal taste, having a real encounter with the song or a piece of art or a piece of clothing where you don't think about how many people liked it, where you don't think about the Instagram account, where you just kind of sit with your own feelings and like have an experience of culture that's in front of you that's like changing your mind or your soul or whatever like that's truly what I want people to have I want you to like sit and stare at a painting and be like what does this make me feel I don't care how many likes it has I don't care how many followers the artist has how am I feeling right now”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I miss that because it's something that I've totally grown up with and that I get a lot of energy and support from. Like when you post something that other people like, when you come up with an idea that other people grab onto, it's super encouraging and energizing.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. I mean, I felt a kind of. In a way, when I was much more offline, like when I wasn't within these feeds. And I mean, I knew that what's presented in a newspaper or shown in a gallery or whatever is subject to the forces of digital platforms. But I was almost missing the community feeling of those feeds and of a fandom where it's like, I know that other people are consuming the same thing I am and we're all chattering about the same stuff and we're all leaving comments on the Instagram account and we're all like clustering in our way around one piece of content online. Like that's made very literal on the internet. You can feel the presence of other people in a way you can't when you're just reading a newspaper or reading a book. Like you might abstractly know that other people are reading this book or reading a magazine article, but you can't feel them next to you in a way. You can't feel the gang quality or the fandom around a certain thing.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I think that is a very succinct description of fandom on the internet. When you were doing your algorithmic cleanse Divorce yourself from that as well by necessity, right? You can walk away from the algorithms and you walk away from these apps, but then you walk away from the other animating force and culture, which is fandom. Did you perceive that as well when you were just like offline? Like, I'm reading the newspaper and like I'm confident that some representative of some the Star Wars fandom is very mad about this movie review. Like, there's something to that where a lot of the culture is in response to these things, even if it's not explicit in the text. It's always the subsect. Did you perceive that?”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, one of the forces of fandom that's not just about consumption is like the need to project your fandom at other people, where it becomes this homogenizing force, I think, where it's like, no, everyone else has to like this thing that I like. And I think that's a kind of filter world era force of like, not only am I going to be a fan of this thing. Not only am I on the fandom, but I'm going to oppose anyone who's not. And I need to like convert. I need to be the zealot and the missionary to go out and convert the heathens and convert them into my group. So I feel like, you know, fandom energizes consumption and going deep into an artist or a body of work, but it also becomes this culture as conflict that I don't think is super healthy.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wonder these fandoms are almost like military groups that everyone is drafted into, right? It's like you might be floating around in the hip-hop community or whatever, and then gradually you get sucked into the Nicki Minaj fandom. Or like you might be a young woman who is interested in, I don't know, acoustic guitar or something, and then you are orbiting Taylor Swift, and then you get sucked into that bucket.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dominate culture. We had Caitlin Tiffany on the show a while back. She wrote an entire book about how, in particular, the One Direction fandom is responsible for all of internet culture, which is quite a thesis, and I love Caitlin for putting it forth. But that's the idea, right? Is it the internet created the opportunities for these fandoms, these large groups of coordinated people to be like Nikki Minaj is actually the center of culture today? And maybe there will be a threat of violence behind that idea given the Barbs' history. But that is sort of in opposition to the algorithms make you all the same, right? Because you have these large groups of people that can sort of override the algorithmic preference and shape culture in whatever way that they choose. Do you feel that tension, or is that just actually the same thing?”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The idea of Filter World is that algorithmic pressures of the internet bleed out into culture and into the real world in quite literal ways. The opposite view of the internet that we're kind of touching on here is that the internet has enabled fandoms at scale in a way that”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You want the niche to be sustainable, right? Like the niches you pointed out, like K pop or Taylor Swift are like, those are tons of people collected into the same big buckets of stuff. Taylor Swift is one huge bucket. K-pop is one huge bucket. I hope there's ways of like Collecting groups of fans around one new kind of music or a record label. Like a band camp in a way where you are actually giving money directly to artists and sustaining them because you're fans of them. I guess niches being sustainable is a big concern of mine at this point.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's hard to build more stable communities around that stuff now. I think there's this tendency to dip into a form of content and then just like let it flow by you and then drift your way to the next thing. Like there's a very superficial experience of a feed that is very dominant. And some people will always go deep. The real fans will always dive down and find the forum or find the Discord or, you know, start a literal pen pal thing or something. But I feel like I wish the ecosystem we were in encouraged that more and had more kind of resting places and smaller communities along the lines of Reddit or a Discord where we could all like find our places and develop good relationships in our niches.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Discovery is so like the opportunity for discovery is so big on the internet. Like you can find almost anything you want to find. You can find the community of K-pop stands of the one tiny bands that you're super into that no one else knows. You can find how to fix your vintage car or build furniture, whatever. And I think that's really powerful and great. And it still exists within algorithmic feeds. Like I find niche DIY content on TikTok all the time or like vlogs from American expats in Copenhagen praising their healthcare. I'm like, wow, I never knew I wanted this content. I really do.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fine, that is not a thing I could do growing up in the Midwest as a teen. I could not find all the other clash fans in the world probably for the best, right? You know, like I had to go interact with other people who did not care about whether the clash was going to reform. I wish I could, but I couldn't. Isn't that the flip side of Filter World that you can actually go find these very narrow communities and go participate in them without the pressure of the algorithm because the internet provides those tools as well?”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The flip side of this that mainstream culture is dominated by filters and algorithms, but like niche culture has thrived as well because you can be a k-pop fan in the middle of the country and have a community around you that is into whatever extremely like esoteric K-pop lore that you need to be into. Or Taylor Schift is another example. I am not sure why numerology is having a moment in the character of Taylor Swift, but numerology is having like, right? And that just developed out of nothing. Like organically developed out of millions of people just sharing an experience together and having a good time.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I hope so. I mean, I tend to think, wasn't the great promise of Silicon Valley and all these tech startups like we are going to give users things that they want? Like there's this thirst for a new form of delivery of content, better curation, like more holistic ideas of what we should consume. And I hope that products arise to give us that. I think people are like restlessly questing for it right now in RSS, in newsletters in a kind of parasocial podcast video, whatever ecosystem. But I don't know. I like internet technology. I like when startups do new stuff. I hope that they take on this challenge and figure it out.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's coming back, like people want to do that, right? You can see that there's you felt that way, I have felt that way. We write articles about RSS readers and people read them. There's demand for it. Do you think that demand is ever going to get filled?”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a real tale wagging the dog element of this, right? Where you can want to have a different media diet. I have set up RSS readers many times over the past two years. I used to read all of my news in RSS. I used to sit in school, my laptop open, and not pay attention and like go through my RSS reader. And I remember saying to some of my friends, I'm out of the internet. I finished the internet today because I'd read everything in the RSS reader. And there is a great diversity in content. No one thinks that way anymore. You open an RSS reader, you plug your favorite websites into it. Even ours candidly, even ours, and you get a bunch of stuff. And some of that stuff is like obviously made for SEO. And some of that stuff is obviously made for other platforms. And very rarely do you see, oh, there's an audience here that wants to read every article on this website. And that is a package.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I mean, really, what I found was that the internet is no longer built for not being on feeds. Particularly two years ago, even websites were not thinking so much about their homepages. Newsletters were less of a thing. I feel like we've come to rely so much on distribution and broadcast that we media creators don't think enough about just having a place where people go to find things they're interested in.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, this was toward the end of 2022, so it was as Musk was buying Twitter. And I just hit a point where I felt so saturated by algorithmic feeds and I'd spent the whole process of writing this book thinking about them. I don't know. I had to escape. It was like I had to just run from this whole ecosystem. And so I paused all my accounts. I logged out of everything on my computer and on my phone I deleted Spotify. I deleted Instagram and Twitter and everything else. And I just went cold turkey for about three months. So I was no longer getting any feeds of information. I wasn't getting recommendations of anything. And I kind of had to figure out new ways of seeking out content. Like I had to look at the newspaper. I had to go to a library. I had to point my browser to the Verge.com and see what was on the homepage.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to end with an exercise you did in the book called An Algorithmic Cleanse, you divorced yourself from Filter World. I feel like everyone did a version of this when Elon bought Twitter and everyone kind of reconsidered their relationship to Twitter. But you went all the way.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, like the rebuilding of those taste making forces is happening, I think, in newsletters. I mean, you look at like. Blackbird spy plane, the men's newsletter. You look at Magasin, the women's fashion newsletter. For some reason, it's happening in fashion very quickly and obviously. But I think those places will build up and grow and hopefully sustain themselves, which they will have to do by hiring more writers, like more people. They will have to decentralize from the single person personality cult just as magazines did, just as Anna Winter has done. And so I think we'll see them get a little bit bigger and consolidate their power and like YouTube channels will publish articles and make podcasts and everything else. But we are in this like rebuilding phase, I think.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, and no one trusts those platforms enough to give them their tasteming judgments. But I think, so we're in a weird swing of like media institutions are totally crumbling and we're, I think we are seeing some rebuilding of that. I mean, you are a tastemaker, the verge. The Verge is a curatorial force that both produces original content and directs attention at specific ideas. The last.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They just disappeared, and PewDiePie went back to making PewDiePie videos, right? Like there's something about the nature of the platform. So they actually can't do the thing themselves. They need something else to provide that role. And I don't know what that next thing is. I think it behooves us all to figure it out, but I don't quite see it yet.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that would be empty, right? I think the TikTok audience would reject that kind of top-down tastemaking from the platform itself. YouTube famously tried to do YouTube originals. Like, we're going to make TV shows now. And everyone was like, why?”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, there needs to be like a tastemaking force that works. And there needs to be a way that cultural ideas or people can get distribution that is not just algorithmic. What you're saying has induces this nightmare for me of TikTok covers TikTok releases a digital cover for its celebrity of the month and just makes them famous. That's a scary thought.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you see a return to that? Like someone else has to play that validating role. Someone else has to provide a celebrity something that feels like a magazine cover, something that rises to that level. And that feels like the antidote to Filter World, right? The people seek this validation. People talk about Anna Wintor as though she's in the Illuminati. Like literally as though she's in the Illuminati. But that's not forever. And there needs to be something that replaces it.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whatever's going on with Kanye and Ass is going on with Kanye Nass, but Vogue still exists, and celebrities still want to be on the cover because that institution still has power. In my view, the platforms do not want any institution staff power. They would rather negotiate with an infinite supply of burned out individuals that all kind of do the same thing. Is the history of, I think, the 2010s media is the decline of these media institutions.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Next to that is the decline of media institutions, which they're not supposed to be collections of individuals in that way. They're supposed to be brands unto themselves with their own kind of taste. You have the Merrill Street monologue from Devil Worth Prada in your book, right? It's like an example of how people think about these institutions.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the things that's interesting about that idea is the influencers are Sort of buffeted by algorithmic pressure. So they have to go pay attention when everything's paying, everyone else is paying attention to, and that loses specificity. But then some of them rise of the others, and you get very powerful individuals who can make different decisions or take brand deals or whatever needs to happen there. That's very commercial. You can go give Stanley Cups to a bunch of Mormon influencers and make Stanley Cups a thing, which is just a fascinating reality. I don't think that has been true in the past.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And it's like a kind of timeless historical popular destination very specific, hard to get around. And yet it was like canons with this wave of 22 year old influencer Taurus. And that has a way of pounding down the specificity of the place too. It's like specificity attracts attention and then attention destroys specificity. And that's a crazy thing to think about.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A big question, yeah. Well, first, I think platforms are the new places in a way, like instead of East Coast, West Coast rap, we have like SoundCloud versus TikTok wrap. There are like the opposing styles, and you can kind of claim allegiance to one or the other. And say, like, pop music has become so globalized. So since we've were like accelerating down this path of placelessness and total globalization of culture, can we go back? I mean, I think I'm kind of pessimistic. The book also covers tourism in Iceland, for example. But I think last year you had this wave of tourism going to the French Riviera and kind of spots along the Mediterranean.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Aesthetic world, right? Like, I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and there was no choice but for things to be from a place. Like literally East Coast and West Coast rap was a thing that was defined by places and tones of places. I don't know if there exists an East Coast and a West Coast rap in the same way. I don't know where Du Aleppa is from. I think her music is great, but there's not like a deep sense of place related to it. Airspace filter world is all about removing that sense of place, right? Making everything the same everywhere. 70 years from now, do you think we come back to a sense of place? Like that's a big question.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it will be historic. It will be as if you're in a pub from the 50s or whatever, and you're like, wow, everything was once covered in wood. That's weird. Except it'll be like, wow, everything was white subway tile and small succulents and ceramics. That reminds me of my grandparents.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so she complains that it's been flooded with new customers who are not there necessarily because they understand the deep quality of it. They just saw it on TikTok and they want to repeat that experience. So the authenticity itself has become a kind of fetishized style, has become a kind of content. And will that pass too in six months? Like, I don't know. That's the knot that I can't solve.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the next generation or the next wave of people does crave the opposite thing. The question is, how do you separate the opposite of millennial minimalism and quote unquote authenticity? Like the seriously authentic thing, the 70-year-old London calf is not subject to trends. Like it's not tailoring its style to anything. It is the way it is because of history. And yet people flow in and out of it. Like there is this calf in London that my friend really likes, which I won't name because it's now gone viral on TikTok.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I mean, I think trend cycles happen faster now because we get saturated with them faster. I mean, you see it in fashion, certainly. You see it in music and design aesthetics. So I think there is this churn of new things. Like the switch from coastal grandmother to mob wife or whatever on TikTok, it's like, wait a second, you know, what even that was two months ago what happened. So that has sped up. And I think.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thing you're describing with the cast in London is like, I'm looking for the authentic thing that happened organically here I don't even know what authentic means in a context where there's wild swings.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You live in New York, everyone's constantly looking for a new apartment. That's just a part of the experience here. And everyone's always all these apartments have been refinished to be exactly the same. And it kind of doesn't even matter. I just have to pick a price and a location and we'll be fine. But now I see on TikTok, like younger people saying, why did millennials turn everything into these weird gray floors and paint everything white? I want my kitchen to have oak cabinets, which I look at, I'm like, absolutely not. But I can see There's just a pendulum swing back. There's just a reaction that is, you know, 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Is that, do you think just like part of the filter world experience that you just see something enough and you're like, give me the opposite?”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those places are really interesting to me because I see the beginning of a pushback. The example that I will give is the gray millennial floors that are in all the real estate listings. I see people complaining about them more than I see people wanting them now”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And reasons that everything exists in there. And I find that increasingly appealing, even as a lot of those places are steamrolled by like capitalist gentrification and urbanism and everything else.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that should be the sequel. That can be the non-leaving world. Leaving Vodza world. No, I think what that makes me think of is I have a friend who lives in London and she is really obsessed with the kinds of London institutions that came up in the post-war period, the calfs, as they call cafes and the old pubs that are not owned by chains now. And there's like, she seeks out this specificity of experience that might be weird. It might be ugly. It might be covered in laminated countertop. Like the sandwiches might not be that good, actually, but they have some kind of stable identity and real life endurance that is the opposite of a blank street coffee shop. Like if Blank Street is the ultimate physical space is content, then these places are like the total opposite textured, real. They have history.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lose that. I'm trying to train myself out of this total preference and appreciate places that are more different or weird”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I still feel comfortable. Like, you know, this is a space that reinforces my tastes. And the same way that you go to a bar or a restaurant that reinforces your own tastes, it's a space that reaffirms your identity in a way. It reminds you of who you are, what you like, the kind of environment you enjoy being in. So in that way, I find them comfortable. I also feel alienated like I think when you become too sensitive to it or too accustomed to that particular shade of filter world or of airspace, it's like the slightest quirks throw you off. If the decor isn't quite right or if the, you know, table isn't wide enough or, you know, there's not enough mid-century modern furniture, you're kind of like, oh, this isn't good enough. So what I'm trying to do now is actually”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh man. I mean, I do think I'm always interrogating my own tastes a little bit. I try to make fun of myself. I do gravitate back to these places over and over again. And in part, it's to investigate it almost, or that's my excuse. I need to see how it works and make sure it's still there in a way. But it's also the taste that I've developed over my 20s, over the 2010s, and it's my generational preference. And it's a joke. Like, I think this could be a book about coffee shops. And it kind of is a book about coffee shops. And I think that's really funny. So in a way, I mean, when you're writing a book, you have to entertain yourself. And if you go to the very end of the book, to the acknowledgements, I also acknowledge the generic coffee shop near my home in DC where I wrote the book. So it's just, it all goes full circle.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, if you are in a city or if you are walking down a block of some downtown somewhere, there's no distribution mechanism there. Like you can walk down a street and choose what place you're going into. But on the internet, I mean, oh, it's really tough. I almost think we should bring back those Japanese text message novels. Like the first person to go from the newsletter to the SMS newsletter or like the newsletter that I consume in my text messages. Oh, it's big. I feel like that'll be big.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be clear. See Yeah, I want to be optimistic here, but it's kind of hard. It's like email is a huge one. And through email, you can distribute whatever content you want. Like that could be videos. It could be audio. It could be text. I don't know what comes to mind is honestly walking around.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's be clear, there's algorithmic incentives for both of those things, but in general, I think there's more diversity in email and in podcasts than in TikTok and YouTube and even Spotify, right? Like you can see the algorithmic platforms push everything towards the sameness, whereas even slightly more open platforms or open distribution methods allow for slightly more diversity.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“SEO has really shoved all text on the internet into the same box, like it all kind of looks the same because Google dominates that distribution. And then we've talked a lot about TikTok. TikTok's distribution kind of forces everyone to be more the same than different. Do you see any other open distribution that is less filter world and more diverse?”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Unfortunately, newsletters are open distribution, right? So you see this diversity of form in newsletter. There's no way to succeed at Substack. There's a way to be a hustle bro on Twitter to try to get people to subscribe to your substack. But there's no one saying here's how to make a substack newsletter or any newsletter. Podcasts, I think, are the same way, right? Relatively open distribution. You see a great variety of forms. You mentioned text on the internet.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, ultimately, Filter World is about the distribution shaping the content, right? I mean, that's In shaping the world, like literally shaping physical spaces around us, if you think of the interior of a copy shop as content, which is a very fun way to think of the interior of a copy.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are many examples, but like a newsletter, I think, are an interesting innovation in that space where they are delivering text in a format that works for people in a subject and editorial approach that works for people. And those don't look like a New York Times article. They're delivering it in a new form.”
2024-03-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT