The hypertext wolf or, a clumsy observation of our social media feeds

The shift away from the preverbal “for you”— finite, human-curated— and to towards the explicit “For You”— endless, algorithm-driven, bespoke— has stripped us of a sort of transparent “social authority” we once had with the hyperlinked-curated web.

“Influencer,” “thought-leader,” etc. are now tainted terms. But we still enjoy recommendations by those with “good taste” and implicit standards.

In an algorithm-driven web where tastemakers are corporate executives and content discovery is limited to our preferred social media silo, we’ve lost the human curator. What is placed on our feed is not necessarily the best in-category but rather the best in-revenue generation, whether a sanitized creator suitable for the IPO supercuts or the agitator, good for keeping us angry and engaged.

Human curators are like the missing wolves of Yellowstone— vilified creatures we allowed to be exiled. But, their absence is fucking up our ecosystem. And we know something’s off; we talk about it every day.

Bring back the curator. Reintroduce the hypertext wolf to the ecosystem.