Friday, May 13, 2022

“The TikTok Algorithm Knew My Sexuality Better Than I Did”

Honesty in packaging statement: this link is about algos, not sexuality.

From Real Life Magazine:

Magic Numbers
Treating “the algorithm” as a kind of divine power misunderstands where algorithmic power comes from

When TikTok first began to amass media attention, a narrative about its “eerily accurate algorithm” became so popular it was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Users talked about its algorithm as if it were sentient. (“The TikTok Algorithm Knew My Sexuality Better Than I Did” one headline memorably claimed.) In winter 2020, the idea of its omniscience had become so pervasive, it became folded into a particular TikTok genre in which spirit workers — mediums, astrologers, tarot readers, Reiki healers and other “SpiritualTok” creators — make predictions about everything from money and love to politics, government, and the economy. This content, which had risen to prominence amid anxieties about the pandemic, posed the physical realm as one of metaphor and synchronicity, where signs from the universe were waiting to be divined — even on your For You page. “This message was meant to find you,” a TikTok spiritualist would say, or, “Your ancestors guided you to this message.” “If you’re seeing this, it was meant for you.”

Such videos appeared between dances, pranks, and other viral content as if by fate, often purporting to diagnose a personal issue or failing, or offering predictions about love, careers, fortune, and spiritual growth. The easy rhythm of scrolling through the app, combined with content about feeling lonely, scared, anxious, and depressed, made this appeal to the heavens especially tempting. It reflected an anxiety about a precarity many were feeling, whether about the pandemic, politics, or just a general sense of being overwhelmed by an information-saturated world. At the time, it wasn’t rare to to see a tarot reader deliver a message about your romantic partner (“They have been hiding their emotions or juggling two things”) or drag you for exhibiting avoidant tendencies in relationships. A few scrolls over, a Reiki healer might try to relieve you of your anxiety with distance healing, and shortly after, another crafty healer might try to discern your soulmate from a set of runes. (“It’s actually your best friend! I think you already knew that.”) 

Spiritualists draw on a collective awareness that the algorithm acts as social engineer

Prediction videos have cemented themselves as popular practice on the app, in which TikTok spiritualists draw on a collective awareness that the algorithm acts as social engineer, while exploring the mystical potential of the opacity of this fundamentally rationalized process. Anything that crosses your path can be taken as a “sign from the universe” rather than a consequence of data collection and processing. “If you’re watching more tarot readings you’re of the vibration of accepting those messages,” one tarot reader told a Wired reporter. TikTok is positioned as a conduit for the cosmic. Whether it’s the data hoarding of a popular AI company or the good grace of the universe makes little difference when everything is a puzzle meant to be decoded. Viewers are invited to ascribe a video’s serendipitous arrival to a higher power, aligning the algorithm with spirit guides, the ancestors, the universe. 

This is not to cast doubt on spiritual practices that may have deep cultural significance, but to consider their proliferation through seemingly antithetical means. TikTok’s algorithm, in this sense, is a contemporary example of how the scientific rationalism often associated with technology tends to generate a counterreaction by means of its very success. Classics scholar E.R. Dodds once characterized the Roman Empire as an Age of Anxiety where “the regimented and mechanical efficiency of the empire could no longer bottle up the chaos growing inside the souls of its subjects and outside its civic walls.” This led to a massive explosion of cults, mystics, and alternative belief systems. Similarly the supremely rational method of using empirical data analysis to power predictive technologies has generated a popular sense that such predictions are oracular or magical. References to moods and “vibes” and other similar concepts help create an illusion of algorithmic kismet — tech so advanced that it works like divine intervention....

....MUCH MORE

 And from an apparently chastened,  possibly embittered Investment Hulk:

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