Death to the Algorithm
Issue #7 - 01/23 - 01/30
Intro/Books
I still go on Facebook sometimes, to check on Facebook Marketplace furniture. It’s always a strange feeling to visit a social media site you no longer participate in and to see how it has changed in your time away. My feed now is mostly photos from my step-mom and uncle. In between, the algorithm also suggests posts from a group called Tiny Home that posts AI-generated images of cozy-looking tiny homes with stairs that could never exist.
It’s not new to suggest that something has shifted on the Internet in the last few years, and that this shift has made its way into our lives outside of the Internet, too. The way that I think about this new phase has been greatly influenced by Kyle Chayka, a culture writer for the New Yorker. Chayka writes about the ability of the algorithm to standardize everything, not just on the internet, but in real life too.
As everything becomes fodder for content, and content must please the algorithm, everything in our lives starts to bend towards the will of the algorithm. It flattens, it repeats, it makes our lives worse and more mundane. But that’s not what it really feels like out in the world, where people are making and doing interesting things every day. I’m always amazed by the sheer number of interesting things happening and also how much it sucks to promote and find them.
That’s one of the reasons I started this Substack, to try and find a way out of the algorithm promotion trap we’re all in.1 I am, maybe naively, hopeful that this type of publication can help ease the stress of promotion and offer a snapshot into all the unique events that LA has to offer.
All of the events in this substack are taken from friends, from friends of friends, and from trusted locations around the city (most of which I heard about on Instagram, naturally). But I hope this can turn into a positive space of recommendations, of word of mouth, of spontaneous discovery. I hope people can use this as a resource to go out to things all around the city, even if they don’t know what the show will be like, even if it’s in a new place, even if the material is not polished or perfect.
All that is to say - hey why not check out Kyle Chayka’s new book Filterworld which is out now.2
Music
Local musician Midnight Prisms shared a Spotify playlist full of music by musicians she’s played with or otherwise admires, and the whole playlist is a banger - just vibey enough to throw on in the background on loop and wait for your new favorite songs to reveal themselves to you.
Comedy
While the Alamo Drafthouse website might tell you How To Have Sex (the critically acclaimed new movie)3, I came here to recommend how to have Stacks, the critically acclaimed old comedy show that is also at the Drafthouse. Brent Flyberg and Milan Patel are hosting a very funny final show at the Drafthouse before moving it to the San Gabriel Valley under a new name. I always say last show is often best show - find out if that’s true on Friday!
As dry January comes to a close, this comedy show in a boba shop is perfect for those avoiding the bars. The line-up, including Amy Silverberg, Rachel Kaplan, and Jared Goldstein, are all hilarious, and there’s just something to be said about a show where everyone, even the comedians, are all hanging out and drinking boba. It makes it feel like you’re just getting a late night caffeine fix with all of your closest, funniest friends. And it’s free! (Not the boba, obviously).
This show seems has everything: comedy, music, a short film, and even some additional surreal animation just to sweeten the deal. As someone with a very short attention span, this is the type of show I usually go for. The comedians, Camirin Farmer and Alan Resnick, are great, and the the short, a true crime mockumentary about animation professionals from the 2010s, is, in my opinion, a very good premise.
Film
Bye Bye Tiberias, the new documentary about French Palestinian actress Hiam Abbas’ life and the four generations of women in her family, is showing at the Laemmle in Santa Monica.4 Normally I wouldn’t really suggest something on the west side but I’ve heard it’s very good and as far as I can tell this is the only theater playing it. I don’t have a clue how to figure out if it will get a wider release later - I tried to Google it but came up short. It’s getting a wide release in France in February, in case that is useful to anyone.
This short by Caroline Symons is also a take on true crime (the genre just keeps on giving!). In this pitch-perfect parody, Symons plays with the always-corny reenactment scenes, this time with adorable miniatures - the description on the Youtube says ‘crudely made’ but that is vastly underselling the detail that has gone into them. Creative, funny, and definitely worth a watch.
Food
It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been trying to check out a buzzy pop-up restaurant, I’ll still always struggle to actually making it to one. Luckily, the immensely popular Syrian street food pop-up Nawal has a regular home at La Fe bar in Echo Park every Saturday and Sunday, and including Sunday brunch. I got some while they were selling at a yard sale a long time ago and still think fondly about the soujouk wrap.
Thanks 4 reading! death 2 the algorithm! - Dana
And I’m not the only one - another Substack, Perfectly Imperfect, was just in the NYT about this and recently started a new app in order to help people recommend stuff better to their friends and networks.
Or read this exerpt here https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/16/the-tyranny-of-the-algorithm-why-every-coffee-shop-looks-the-same
