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Like every morning, Paco, 53 years old, gets up at 7:30 AM. He takes a quick shower and shaves impeccably so his mustache looks its best. He puts on his chinos, his checkered shirt, his padded vest and goes out to the street. The first thing he does when stepping on the sidewalk is to light up a Ducados before heading to the newsstand 100 meters from home. He sets aside El Mundo and ABC and picks up La Razón. Also El Marca, as some teams announce new signings in LaLiga.
– Good morning Paco. – says Juan, the newsstand owner.
– Good morning Juan. – says Paco extending his hand with exact change.
– I just got the new Atleti scarves. Do you want one?
A few kilometers to the west, Pablo, 21 years old, is dodging people with his longboard to get to work as soon as possible. The keffiyeh around his neck waves in the wind. The 10 minutes he's running late don't stop him from pausing to roll a cigarette with loose tobacco and make his usual stop to get a coffee with soy milk at the small fair trade shop. He takes the opportunity to buy El País, hidden as always under several flyers advocating for (many) different issues about (many) different identities.
– Good morning Pablo. – says Juan, the shopkeeper.
– Good morning Juan. – says Pablo extending his hand with exact change.
– I just got the t-shirts for next week's demo. Do you want one?
…
Nobody would think to censure either of the two Juans for offering things of interest to their customers.
Nor would anyone say that Paco and Pablo are creating their own echo chambers.
And yet, it seems that when internet is behind it, this type of behavior is Evil.
A trend that's spreading, blaming algorithms and social media for creating echo chambers as if that had never happened in real life.
As if we used to complain about the recommendations from the Juans instead of thanking them.
As if it were strange that during your life you surround yourself with people (friends) with whom you share similar ideologies and tastes.
As if no one ever recommended things that are similar to what you like.
As if it were wrong to want to abstract ourselves from certain lines of thought that probably don't matter to us at all and only generate noise in our daily lives.
As if algorithms were only a way to cloud our cognitive capacity and restrict our free will.
As if we were exempt from responsibility in our own decisions and needed a paternal figure to defend us from the evil tech companies.
As if we weren't to blame for creating our own echo chambers.
It seems that some people need to be able to blame algorithms and tech companies for others not wanting to listen to them.
As if we had been denied that capacity for decision.
–
Following this thread, months ago I decided to switch from Apple Music to Spotify.
Every day when I opened Apple Music I saw music playlists that didn't interest me at all: Chenoa on the cover for the umpteenth time with Alejandro Sanz behind and Pablo Alborán lurking beyond.
From time to time a "motivational" playlist would appear with Eurovision-worthy hits whose description I'll never forget. Motivation, yes, for First World challenges, literally:
"Twenty more sit-ups, the pile of dishes in the sink or that tax return that's been sitting on the table laughing for weeks. We all have challenges that require an extra dose of motivation. "
I imagine all this depends on the "spurious" interests of record labels to bring formula radio to a digital environment. Rearview mirror effect brought to digital music consumption. Maybe that's why TikTok devours Apple and Spotify in the young market.
Apple, you knew everything about me, you should have anticipated that I was never going to hit play on those recommendations.
I like Spotify's recommendations, YouTube's, Amazon's... I like reading tweets from people I follow and getting lost in Instagram photos from profiles that entertain me...
I like my echo chamber and I don't like that they try to make us feel guilty for wanting to immerse ourselves in our political, literary, musical, gastronomic, cinematographic, sports, architectural, photographic worlds...
Let's freely enjoy what makes us happy.
Pursue pleasure and avoid pain, as Epicurus would say.
This article emerged a few days ago, thanks to Haken, after reflecting on how I started with one of their links and ended up listening to one of my favorite bands. The steps were roughly as follows:
I start with the article that appears in Haken #164: Is old music killing new music?, in it I find a link to the story BTS's 'Dynamite' could upend the music industry. So moved by curiosity to know more about BTS (I had heard some of their songs before but without paying too much attention) I dove into reading it.
Of course the next thing was to go to YouTube to watch the Dynamite music video:
Watching it I couldn't help but reflect on how masculine beauty stereotypes have changed since the 90s. So I did a search for the Backstreet Boys to be able to make a comparison without relying on memory.
In the Backstreet Boys video, the algorithm showed me Little Big as recommended.
Surreal? No, crushing logic:
Totally captivated, I watched several of their videos following YouTube's recommendations until I came to one where they reminded me of a kind of Russian Atari Teenage Riot:
And after that nostalgia hit I couldn't help but go straight to play The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails on Spotify.
Echo chamber? Algorithm's fault?
No, the responsibility for starting with BTS and ending up with NIN is mine, the user's.
Maybe it's simply that, algorithm or not, we go towards what attracts us.