deny algorithms your dispositions

Sep. 10, 2025 11:59 PM

Amidst the existential Judecca that is Youtube throttling the discovery and reach of everyone around (and maybe including) me, I am once again reminded of a quandary that has blighted me for much of this post-Covid consciousness.

Algorithms have too much power over people looking to discover new works of art.

This is not an isolated problem that has only recently surfaced in a controlled environment. A number of (debatably) reputable music publications, like Pitchfork, feature pieces speaking at length on how to broaden your horizons past Spotify. Music critics like Anthony Fantano, whether you love or loathe them, are vocal in their distaste of AI music and general degradation of music streaming platform quality. Hell, people on Youtube can't go five minutes without telling you how the algorithm changes constantly make people less willing to click videos because it irreversibly warps their brain chemistry in a way that dissuades them from watching anything with less than 10,000 views.

Suffice to say it, these systems designed to keep people engaged with a platform's material ironically have an equally dulling effect on its audience. People are now so tied to the concept of "the algorithm" and a potential need to appeal to it, that they are now too afraid of straying from its godforsaken light.

Horrifying.

I'd like to express my thoughts on how to move past this conundrum that some readers may have, but I think it's worth discussing the issues with algorithms at length beforehand. What better way to do so than to use complaints on fields I'm passionate about as a springboard for broader conversation? I love making up a guy on the computer to be mad at, hell yeah!!

reading video essay critique from people who have never created anything ever

One of the most simultaneously prevalent, and frustrating, critiques of video essays that I encounter online is this idea that most of them are lazily researched slop with zero detailed research or overarching thesis behind them other than "thing [insert channel owner here] don't like bad." While it's pretty easy for me to dismiss these generalisations if you... I dunno, watched some video essays from someone with less than 100k subscribers, I think it highlights a wider problem with algorithmic dependence and a general lack of willingness to fact check longform critique because of 'perceived relatability' that Youtube has carved into the minds of impressionable minds (read: morons like me) in the wake of its enigmatic algorithm.

Fellow longform video producers like Marsh echo a sentiment that I respond to these complaints with on the regular: "many people are willing to write a manifesto on what youtubers do wrong but they won't just be the change themselves." There's a strange indignance towards certain qualities in the "popular" video essays that's frequently misattributed as commonplace, leading to frankly baffling critiques that you think would be best addressed if people used their spite as motivation to do it better. It's not a complaint held only by randoms with a niche micro-following, either - figures with nearly 10,000 times my audience, like MBT, form their overarching issues with the video essay format almost entirely on videos by popular creators that ended up more like a rant with a script than a structured critique on a focused topic.

Youtube's algorithm has created a devastating ripple that sweeps up anyone with actual knowledge in its path to make way for half-arsed overviews on people that really do not deserve any coverage whatsoever on them. It speaks volumes that people view video essays this way, because you know it's nowhere nearly as prevalent as one would seem if you actually put in the effort to engage with coverage of anything you're interested in from someone outside your normal periphery.

Sure, you can read this as the grievances of a small creator who's mad that their videos don't get tens of thousands of views overnight. I sure wouldn't complain if that happened to me! That being said, though... I don't think this is just a case of people not searching for, or watching, well-structured videos from smaller producers.

Many readers may be aware that I take particular umbrage with the term 'video essay' to some degree. I choose to avoid referring to my work as such because of a similarly constructed belief that 'video essays' as a medium are ultimately contradictory to the etymology used to define them. My understanding of the term 'video essay' is rather prescriptivist in nature - it should be structured like an essay, designed to answer a question or debunk a chosen argument, with a structured analysis of existing material pertaining to the broader topic in question being consistently referenced. Some will see this as a rigid understanding of the medium, but I view this as a sufficient response to the contemporary problems many have with the wider discipline. Should you not wish for greater intellectual integrity in a field of critique widely accessible to the public masses?

I often refer to what many would consider as 'video essays' to be simply 'longform discussions', because that's ultimately what many of these videos happen to be at the end of the day. They can sometimes be a rant, or a properly annotated criticism of a topic with looser standards on citations here and there. Irrespective of whatever category they fall into in that regard, they are still better suited to the term of 'longform discussion' rather than a proper 'video essay', because the connotations of an 'essay' imply a degree of factual rigour. People expect a point to be answered, material to be provided, an argument to be dissected. It's natural for them to feel disappointed when a video essay doesn't meet those expectations, but I think it's the combination of the term's evolution to encompass pretty much any longform video with an overarching discussion and people's refusal to search for videos of their own accord that creates the perceptions on display now.

It ultimately leads back to genres and terminology. A need for such frameworks limit how we describe and analyse various mediums of art, often failing to progress discussions beyond a need to compare and contrast works in similar fields. You see it with video games, you see it with music, and poignantly, you see it with video essays too. It's time to move past the need to analyse art through the lens of genres.

streaming platforms, & the nietzschean abyss of contemporary music discovery

See the aforementioned link for an expanded detail on my thoughts regarding music genres.

Oh, fun. Music streaming platforms. It feels like many of my contemporaries, acquaintances, and friends alike can't STAND them. On some level, it's hard to blame them. Not everything you could possibly want to listen to is available, the quality often pales in comparison to digital file formats, and the platforms themselves are overpriced for a dogshit service that breaks features nobody asked for. It's like everyone in this part of the industry took inspiration from the World Economic Forum!

Ahem. Conjecture aside, there is a lot to be desired with music streaming platforms. Many of them, like Spotify, often pay most of their artists poorly, mostly as a result of the "communal pot" revenue idea hardly working out when it means those at the bottom of the totem pole get pennies if they're lucky. A lot of these services also just function like shit unless you pay for the premium service, which is... um. What's the point of paying money for this when you could just spend your subscription money on an SD card and just pirate everything anyway??? (not like I said this or anything haha lol)

These points, and others, compound the issue that many streaming platforms, Youtube included, often promote very lazy discovery habits as a result of their algorithms. People are typically incentivised to just let the algorithm(s) dictate their music tastes, which usually leads to a very limited perspective on music. I'm not kidding when I say that listening solely to video game soundtracks will ensure you keep getting recommended only video game soundtracks. It's BLEAK.

One obvious effect this has on music discovery is that people form opinions on music that are just entirely incorrect. You ever wonder what someone means when you come across the classic "music is dead" take out in the wild? 99.73% likelihood that it's encouraged by this specific kind of listening habit now. Audiences become infinitely less proactive searching for music that potentially interests them, and spaces cultivated to share music recommendations as a counter-culture to exactly this start to die out. I'm not calling for the revival of the early 2010s /mu/ hipster archetype here or anything, but we have ironically allowed for a culture of the exact opposite to flourish,consequently becoming an kudzu-fashioned invasive species.

With the revolutionary nightmare machine that is AI music gradually swamping music streaming platforms like Spotify and Youtube (Music) in shit, it's becoming harder and harder to discover new music that might catch your fancy. You genuinely cannot tell what you are listening to nowadays because people are describing their curated playlists (which might not even be curated at all) with vague feeling-type language such as "the world we should have gotten." That's right. Vibe coding has become a lifestyle now!!! We are enraptured by the brutalism of the machine!!! Fuck me five ways from Friday, we're actually too far gone.

Genres and terminology have definitely added to this endless push-and-pull that producers and composers suffer from with their work, as they now have to compete with the fact that potential audiences latch onto music as a status symbol of some kind. Speaking with the hyperflip producer xaev as part of my research on the wider scene hit me with food for thought that I never really considered until we started talking about journalistic and casual perceptions.

"I feel like that’s the thing about genres as a whole - those are decided by people. [You have] the listeners who consume the music, and people who self-describe their own genre that they’re creating as a necessary means to be marketable to fit in somewhere, that’s just what everyone wants to do."

Genres are decided by the people who listen to the music. If listeners' music habits are dictated a certain way by algorithms, and they invariably define the music they hear through a lens of limited, or poor, misunderstandings, then what does that mean for how said music is described? How does that then impact how people discuss its impact or cultural influence? And is it any less frustrating that people use the work of creatives as mere bragging rights?

so what are you gonna do about it wise guy

Most of these discussions will end on some cliche statement or aesop on how you should take control of your discovery habits, manifest your own destiny. Look, I'm writing this as some fuckin' American politico got shot through the neck and died, any subtlety nosedived out the window here.

I won't tell you to simply make a concerted effort to discover new creatives and music. Instead, I will tell you that algorithms are indeed a tool. Tools are meant to be used for a greater process.

The last few years have been critical for how I discover new music, and part of that breakthrough stems from me using algorithms much more intently than simply clicking on [thing I know already and like] ad infinitum. Using resources like Discogs, VGMdb, and MusicBrainz as resources to quickly comb through the discography of an artist I'm interested in on a compilation album has paid dividends to broadening my horizons much further than simply relying on the mysterious computer to do all the work. Sure, it's tedious at times, navigating these databases can be arduous, and sometimes you might just wanna listen to tunes. I can't blame you for that. I do the same thing. Nonetheless, it's an invaluable method for discovering new artists, groups, compilations, and scenes without the advantage of having friends around you with the requisite pre-knowledge.

I'm not asking people to scour Soundcloud or anything either, but the discovery feeds and aforementioned process still works wonders over there too. I've encountered a whole community of hyperflip producers themed after gacha games like Uma Musume, Blue Archive, and recently Genshin Impact, all bringing new inspirations and ideas to the table. Sometimes... it's not a bad idea to just spend an hour rolling through Soundcloud. You could find a new favourite producer!

Vetting the average Youtube video essay is harder, but ultimately the same kind of process. Look at who your favourite essayists are engaging with. Pay attention if they recommend someone by name. Be more willing to comment on parts of their work if you take interest, or contention, with any of the material. Don't be afraid to put in the work yourself sometimes.

I have nothing further to impart, other than the brilliant comment that "all dance music is intelligent dance music because it's a smart idea to wanna dance and havea goodtime" - thanks for listening.