The Internet needs curators.
Have money and SEO ruined it? Or is it the algorithms? Answer: It's all of the above.
I’m tackling a LOT in this post, but serves as a punch list for all the things that have been on my mind lately. I might explore them in more depth at a later date.
Today, Internet content can generally be divided into three categories1:
SEO-driven content
Pay-to-play content
User-generated content (UGC)2
The first is designed to manipulate search algorithms in order to boost visibility.
The second is designed to bypass algorithms with money.
The third is designed to generate content either by paying nothing (standard UGC) or very little for it (e.g., creator funds).
The Internet, which was once a weird and wonderful Wild West, has become a sea of junk content and advertisements that one must wade through with little to no reward in the end. Social media is following suit. I suppose this is the inevitable path of all things underground and weird… eventually the corporate world “discovers” them, sees dollar signs, and co-opts the culture for its own.
Having spent most of my career in online media, I’ve watched this slow demise of my favorite place much like watching a snowman melt… dwindling everyday with no way to save it. It’s happening to music media, and our favorite news media sites, too.
I experienced this shift as a publisher of content and social who made a living through sponsorship, along for the ride when well-paying banner advertisements transitioned into well-paying sponsored content (“spon con”). Then, as the space grew more and more crowded, the revenue dwindled and became the spon con that we see everywhere now. While this shift was initially done to blend spon con and media more seamlessly, it has become so ubiquitous that we’re now lacking content that’s unbiased, curated, or editorial.
This rise of spon con occurred at the same time that the creator economy began to explode, meaning less of the ad dollars went to publications, and more were being directed to influencers. As profits and clicks shrank, the need to bring in readers grew, resulting in a rise in click bait. Quality editorial content dwindled. Writers are being paid less and less, leading them to gig writing for multiple publications. A dedicated editorial staff is now a luxury.
The result of this is the pay-to-play model of content, in which publications charge for a large portion of what they publish. In fact, they’re charging for content that you don’t even know has been paid for. One could argue that there’s still a semblance of curation of content with this model (perhaps by choosing who to accept money from), but in my opinion you cannot truly curate content while also receiving financial compensation for said content.
There is almost no content curation when it comes to SEO-driven content3, and UGC is a free-for-all. The crowded space keeps growing, too, making it harder and harder to find the tastemakers. The algorithms were supposed to help, but are, unfortunately, contributing to escalation of a new global—and more boring—culture.4
Let me get nostalgic here for just a moment to make a point, because there was a time when we could trust a publication, a curator, a tastemaker, an editor5 to share something with us that we couldn’t find elsewhere that wasn’t a plug, a kickback, or an affiliate. I wouldn’t “like to know it” thanks.
I know I’m longing for a bygone era, how predictable! And yet… what I’m really mourning here is the death of independent media: opinions that aren’t created as clickbait, hot takes that aren’t manufactured for views, and recommendations that aren’t paid for—ultimately I’m looking for people I can trust. What’s independent and trustworthy online these days is few and far between, or you have to pay for yourself (understandably) and even some subscription media is questionable because subs don’t actually pay the bills.
I grew up in the era of zines, a time in which independent mags and record labels could be somewhat profitable, and a time when a writer could make a living simply by being a writer (and for a single publication - gasp!) and not also an influencer. A time when DIY was still kinda punk rock and not time-wasting, soothing escapist fodder for eyeballs6. I’ve had this conversation IRL and the argument against some of this is that “it’s entertainment”, similar to how my generation passed time playing video games or watching TV growing up (yes, I know people still do this too but back in the day, we didn’t have other options!). Sure, TikTok is entertaining! IG passes the time. It’s fine. I’m not anti-mindless scrolling and entertainment for entertainment’s sake, and I’m not necessarily anti-social media, either. However, I find myself on social media less and less. I’ve been reading more books, journals, and I recently purchased a few physical zines. I’ve also been going down weird rabbit holes to purposefully fuck up my algo and seek out things I wouldn’t normally get served up in my feed.
Algorithms shouldn’t be a replacement for curation, and the human brain wasn’t designed for infinite choice. Also, it’s not really infinite choice if you’re only feeding people the most popular or most algorithm-friendly items. That’s not choice. It’s not taste. It’s data and math (and you know how I feel about only following the data!).
Could AI make a difference?
says in “AI has huge potential to augment and enhance curation, not replace the need for human judgment entirely… Curator selections often have rich context on why something meets current needs.“7 But, we can’t say yet whether AI will solve these problems for us. I don’t think it will because the platforms aren’t actually interested in solving this problem. As businesses, they’re only interested in optimizing to keep us coming back for more swiping and clicking and liking and hate/rage watching, because that’s the only way they will make money.
If you want to make your experience better, you must first recognize your vulnerability to the algorithms, and distance yourself from them… that’s a good first step. But then where does one go online for well-curated content? Substack newsletters 🫤? Substack is a newsletter/blog-shaped Trojan Horse. It’s actually a social media platform, sneakily awaiting its moment to quietly insert an algorithm.
There aren’t too many high-quality, editorially honest places left online, and even if there were, they’d be difficult to find in the algorithmic popularity contest. You can’t really escape the algorithms online (or paid influencers) so your best bet is texting a few friends for recommendations, or going to a local, independent store for books or music8.
We need leaders in all aspects of our lives, and human curators should be the arbiters of taste. You may already be sick of trending templates, memes, specific types of click-baity content, soulless imagery, vapid videos, engagement farming, annoying trending songs.9 It’s not going to stop. In fact, it’s going to get much worse. The problem is that the next generations are being introduced to everything via an algorithmic, data-driven world that lacks authentic human recommendations and discovery.
Bring the curators back, please.
This excludes company websites and retail, although you can make the case that all three of these categories also comprise a great deal of retail.
This includes social media.
Don’t even get me started on how Google has completely ruined the Internet—everything from content to design. If you’re in the mood to get pissed off, here is some infuriating reading: https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization
Recommended reading: Filterworld by
I understand that beauty and fashion editors have long received samples and freebies, but I do think there were slightly better journalistic standards in the past.
Nobody actually follows and does those Internet DIY tutorials anyway. They are purely for entertainment purposes.
Let’s be honest - how many of these are even around anymore?
This one really kills me because (to me) matching a song to a visual is such a personal, artistic choice.
What a great post! Can't believe I missed it. I think the curators you are mentioning might be alike "influencers" but somewhat educated ones. Ones that have knowledge and opinions on specific topics. Even though working in a large marketing department, I too spend much less time on social medias (except here on Substack), and try to be more in the "now". In fact, last year, I used a privacy a tool called "Redact" to clean up my social media. I must have set something wrong, because I inadvertently deleted ALL my facebook friends. "Well, that settles it then" I thought. And that's how I stopped using Facebook. Do I regret it. Nope.
Curators play such an active role, they are in a sense the new authors. It's already the case in arts, but I guess it's fundamental to make sense of what happens online. Especially if we consider that internet is not eternal.
https://aliveinsocialmedia.substack.com/p/internet-is-not-eternal-memory-as?utm_source=publication-search