👋

Friends, hello. My name is

 @mikerugnetta

Mike Rugnetta and this morning I’m gonna talk to you about
popular culture as a site of struggle, and a particularly influential entrant into that struggle:
The Algorithm. But two things, first:
 CONTENT WARNING

1) A content warning

In the last section of this talk, and for a very brief moment in a couple minutes, I’m going to talk about white supremacists and other hateful ideologies. That includes
mentions of the Christchurch shooting, including some screenshots of newspaper headlines. I wont show any violent images and I wont repeat any hate speech
verbatim, but I will discuss the people who traffic in it.

So just … fair warning if that sort of thing is not for you, I understand. I wont take it personally if you need to excuse yourself now, or at any other time this morning.

and 2) a bit of a background on me, so you can decide how big a

grain of salt you should take with what I’m about to say.

I’m a
 🖋#🗓
writer, host and digital producer.

From 2012 through 2017 I researched, wrote and hosted

Idea Channel, a YouTube show produced by
PBS Digital Studios. Idea Channel was about popular culture and philosophy, using one to understand the other. It was also an attempt to encourage large scale,
intellectual collaboration. Every episode asked a different question:
Is fandom a religion?
How is the original Jurassic Park film a commentary on capitalism?
Why … do … people draw sexy comics of Overwatch characters?
I would develop one answer to each episode’s question and invite the audience to comment with their answers. The next week… I’d
respond to their comments. We won some awards,
ALMOST broke a million subscribers, and had a really fun 5 years.

I also write and host a podcast called

Reasonably Sound - which is about examining human experience through sonic phenomena. Most recently, I spoke with a few people who have designed the sounds
that will emit from
electric cars since their motors are dangerously quiet. Other episodes have been about how
hold music is designed to mess with the human brain’s perception of time, and about why every
digital assistant – Alexa, Siri, etc – codes female by default.

I sometimes host
Crash Course and Mental Floss. Where you can see me talking about
comparative world mythology,
theater history or, uh,
Lisa Kudrow? I guess?

And often, I work as an executive producer on digital series -

managing researchers, writers, journalists, editors, and producers. I help media companies and other organizations that want to make fun, usually educational internet
things and in so doing have a fulfilling, responsible relationship with their audiences.

I play a lot of
tabletop roleplaying games. I am
left handed. Here’s a picture of my dog
Jack and most of what I do is informed by an interest I have in
 💪
POWER: who has it, who doesn’t, and how it can be better distributed. I tend to ask these questions – in my personal and professional work – about technology, and …
the media. Which I suppose is why BYU was kind enough to invite me here to speak. So - most importantly -
 THANK YOU

Thanks to Benjamin for inviting me, BYU for having me, and you all … for coming to hear what I have to say about the media of today, and tomorrow. It is an honor.

So - I’m curious about

 The Algorithm

The Algorithm because, it’s an ever present force in our lives, as internet users. Often referred to with a definite article, as though it is some prototypical instance, ”The
Algorithm” does have several flavors –
Youtube,
Facebook,
Netflix,
Spotify,
Tiktok, and others. Though each instance is
 http://bit.ly/2utmy1Q

different in design, they all serve roughly the same purpose: The Algorithm wants to figure out what you like, to show you more of the same, so you stay on platform.

 The Algorithm

The Algorithm… recommends things. And I’ve wondered: how

 💪
powerful is it? Not just … how well does it recommend relevant content but… how much sway does it have beyond it’s respective platforms?
How do “pop culture” and “The Algorithm” interact with one another? Is the algorithm swayed more by popular culture? Or vice versa?

And also - what’s it like trying to

figure out who you are – to form, and reform your own beliefs and identity – while The Algorithm does the same?

By which I mean… tries also to figure out who YOU are.

Not who … it … is.

Though maybe The Algorithm

 i, algorithm

is doing that too?

 💪
This is all meaningful at this particular moment, given the
ongoing controversy surrounding youtube, facebook and twitter’s hosting – and some would claim implicit support – of hateful ideologies. We’ll talk more about
facebook’s recent policy changes at the end.

And actually - I started working on this talk

before the New Zealand shooting, but I finished it the week of and … the prevalence of the internet in that conversation ended up steering me more centrally into territory
I was planning to only skate. Benjamin asked me to give a talk about … the challenges of thinking with others … this may end up a presentation of a problem through
which we all can think together.

I have some starting points, but … I’ve tried to leave time for us to have a conversation at the end, and I’ll be around all day, because I’d love to talk more about all of
this.

But. We’ll get there. First, I want to talk about why

pop culture is an important, and powerful tool for thinking with, and about, other people.
 Well
Sort of
I mean
Not really?
But also kinda?
Ugh this is complicated, huh?

Then, we’ll talk briefly about how the media we love helps formulate our identity and community, and how the Internet plays a role in that process. It’s there that we’ll
bump into - and end with -
the algorithm, and other complicated elements contributing to the current…
 TRUTH COMING OUT
OF HER WELL TO
SHAME MANKIND

Jean-Léon Gérôme
1896

same, girl… same

http://bit.ly/2uqTtE3

… mood … let’s call it.

 ✅ Intro

▶ Media and Popular Culture

⬜ Bids for Power

⬜ Identity and ⬜ The Algorithm

So - we’re gonna be talking a lot about “media” and, to be clear, by ”media” ... I mean method for distributing information or entertainment AND industry or commercial
entity.
 🕹
TVs, newspapers and video games are media and so is Fox News, Blizzard, YouTube, Twitter Inc and your personal twitter account. All of it: “media“.

Media is important for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that it has a controlling stake in popular culture. That’s a more diaphanous concept; like a
 http://bit.ly/2HNByQ5

Picasso painting “popular culture” brings many different perspectives into one frame. Like a lenticular print,
 http://bit.ly/2HSvntU

it shifts this way and that depending upon how you look at it. Tilt your head to one side it’s
Katniss Everdeen; tilt it to another, it’s
Twin Peaks; a little further and it’s
Guy Fieri.

BTW the kickstarter for my

 P E
T Y
T O
R O
P
Girl on Fieri Walk With Me lenticular print is going live at the end of this month - I hope I can count on your support.

Point being: popular Culture is not one thing, not even within the relatively restricted framework of America in 2019, which is mostly where we’re gonna stick. Theorist
John Storey – in his book
Cultural Theory and Popular Culture – outlines 6 different and not-mutually-exclusive views of popular culture. It is, perhaps,

 Things Which Have Achieved
“Numeric Success”

1. Things which have Achieved Popularity - best sellers, blockbusters, platinum records.

 NOT Paintings
NOT Ballet
NOT Opera
NOT Haute Couture

2. Not High Culture - Culture which ISN’T hung on the wall in a museum, or performed at the opera.

 Anything with “Broad Appeal”

3. Mass Commercial Culture - Stuff which is made for lots of people, for profit.

 What if Pop Culture is just, like, a construct?

4. Postmodern Culture - Things which fuse, or ignore the distinction between, high and low culture

 Flannel shirts?

5. Culture of The People - This view dismisses anything handed down from cultural or economic authorities and instead says popular culture is that which is
“authentic” - an increasingly difficult quality to identify in the 21st century.

But it’s the SIXTH take on popular culture that I find the most interesting, and useful:

 POP CULTURE
IS A

SITE OF

“HEGEMONIC STRUGGLE”

6. Popular Culture is a Site of Hegemonic Struggle.

What does that mean? Well … the “site” part means that popular culture isn’t a set of media objects… it’s more of a
 http://bit.ly/2HXrCTU

context, through which media objects – and other things – pass.

Like the
Oasis from Ready Player One, Popular Culture is a vast, virtual landscape. It’s where people have relationships and develop their tastes; where audiences challenge
themselves, or zone out and relax; where they broaden their view of the world, or seek confirmation for what they’ve already decided. It’s where media is made,
distributed, and consumed. Popular Culture is a place … of tension.

Much of that tension arises from how “open” it is. Moreso than
 http://bit.ly/2Tw4f6m

high culture,
 http://bit.ly/2TzL23L

niche or
 http://bit.ly/2TzhMtM

sub-culture… moreso than

academic study and
 http://bit.ly/2Tx462c

even civic action in some places: almost everyone is invited to participate in popular culture, in some way or another: as an
observer,
advocate,
commentator, and increasingly: a
producer.

The barrier to entry for popular culture consumption, and authority, is relatively low. You don’t often need to come prepared, and usually you don’t even need to search
out an entry point. Popular Culture comes to you.
Especially if you’re a white, middle class and aged 18 to 34? But even so … pop culture can and does host a plurality of people, with a vast diversity of backgrounds,
experiences, interests and … influence within the culture at large.

Which brings us to … hegemony.

 “Hegemony”

Generally, Hegemony means the power a state has over its citizens, or territories. Some entity or group of people is in charge, and maybe it sucks, but I don’t know like
it’s not that bad and what other choice do you really have? Every couple years people get mad about the condition of the roads, or the tax rates … and then The Powers
that Be… they listen, and make things slightly better. It could be worse, right?

But … popular culture isn’t a state and no one is really… a “citizen” of it? So what gives?

Pop culture’s hegemony isn’t “state” or “colonial” but part of what philosopher
Antonio Gramsci [grahm-shee] called a “cultural hegemony”. The people in charge don’t RULE. They provide
 Moral and
Intellectual Leadership

“moral and intellectual leadership”. Through the administration of social institutions like schools, the courts, religion, and the media, they help guide the production of
culture… including popular culture.

This means their values and viewpoints become common, and familiar, because the less powerful
 http://bit.ly/2TwL50b

can’t easily produce and widely distribute media objects which represent their perspective.

The thoughts and morals of the “leaders” - John Storey calls them the
 Forces of
Incorporation

“Forces of Incorporation” – seem natural, inevitable … as do the systems that embody those thoughts and morals. Often those systems are tied so inextricably to
everyday life, it’s hard to imagine how things could be different.

Gramsci calls this the formation of a

 “““COMMON SENSE”””

“common sense”, and it can lead to the wide spread acceptance of ideas that don’t necessarily benefit the people who hold them.

For instance: it “makes sense” that hard work pays off, and will make you wealthy. If you’re not wealthy, then maybe you’re just not working hard enough. This “common
sense” idea shifts the focus of economic injustice from the various structures which perpetuate it … to the victims of those structures, framing them as lazy, rather than
powerless, or exploited.

 “iT’s NOt A sTeREoTyPe iF It,S TrUe!”

Racist stereotypes are sometimes defended by the charge that “it’s not a stereotype if its true!”, another way of asserting they are “common sense”. Black men depicted
in media as criminals; Asian-American students depicted as academic superstars; women of color depicted as “””sassy””” are tropes which maintain racial hierarchies,
rather than reflect any actual truth about the world.

Which gets us to the “struggle” part. Since popular culture does host so many different perspectives, it’s a particularly suited
… battlefield, as it were, to argue judiciously for and against the formation of “common sense”. Moral and Intellectual Leadership may throw something into the Pop
Culture landscape
only to have it resisted or downright refused by the larger culture, or portions of it, who then demand recognition. John Storey calls them the
 Forces of
Resistance

“Forces of Resistance”. They climb in their

giant robots, or … uh ..
Twitter accounts? And speak their mind. With lasers. Or words!

An important, and necessary part of this negotiation is that the moral and intellectual leadership then sometimes…
listens, and adjusts. Just enough that those who have resisted are satisfied… but not SO much that the hegemony is threatened. The dust settles, and leadership learns
a lesson about what to do, or not do to next time. The rabble returns to
“What’re you gonna do … it could be worse, right?”. We assent to power, reach an
 “Compromise Equilibrium”

“compromise equilibrium” and the process begins again when a new event inspires resistance.

This is cultural hegemony. And it may seem… hopeless. Like a

 http://bit.ly/2Fyl6Ag

Sisyphean task or a
 http://bit.ly/2TtUmG1

Rube Goldberg machine where - after a long and complex journey with so many dramatic pirouettes and delicate maneuvers the ball and system both return to square
one, seemingly unchanged, to start it all again.

But over time, and over repeated instances of resistance, little by little the hegemony can shift.
 💪
The underrepresented can occasionally find room among the leadership, or at least lobby for reflection of their experiences in the culture that is created. This back and
forth guides the creation of popular culture,
which guides formation of “common sense”, which guides the creation of popular culture. As improvement goes, it’s slow, but not-nothing.

Also - hegemonic struggle is one of the first steps towards a permanently equitable situation, with more sympathy than stress, and no need to get in the robot and wage
twitter war … except probably over how you pronounce this word.
 gif
Nobody say a thing! You’re all beautiful and I love you just the way you are.

Popular culture is a very important stake in the process, and potentiality, of increased and equitable distribution of power. To paraphrase sociologist and activist Stuart
Hall,
 Popular Culture isn’t just

a site of struggle –
It is also the thing to be

won or lost in that struggle

pop culture is not JUST a site of struggle, it is also the thing to be won or lost IN that struggle.
 ✅ Intro

✅ Media and Popular Culture

▶ Bids for Power

⬜ Identity and ⬜ The Algorithm

But … ok… given that our day to day experience of popular culture is
Marvel Films,
Ariana Grande songs,
Fortnite emotes and
TikTok trends this talk of
 💪
“leadership” and “resistance” might sound melodramatic. What does a
dance have to do with powerful people, or the under represented?

Well - like chess pieces,

 http://bit.ly/2Tyr7C2

media objects are finely crafted artifacts in their own right – Or, yknow,
… finely crafted enough you get the gist.

They have a formal goal: to entertain, to inspire … to profit. But as chess pieces do, they also have a functional purpose: they represent some
gambit in an ongoing, multidimensional encounter.

Fornite
is a multiplayer shooter-survival-construction game. But publisher
Epic is also involved in an going dispute concerning in-game animations reproducing the dance moves of black artists
without permission or credit, while they enter into paid, branded partnerships with white artists to reproduce their likeness.

As Yussef Cole put it for

 http://bit.ly/2TytODE

Waypoint: this raises an ethics question as much, or more, than it does a copyright question. Formally: Fortnite is a game; functionally, it does more than simply provide
an environment in which you might pwn n00bs or whatever you kids are saying these days.

Marvel Films
are popular culture’s largest, and most notable on-going survey of what a “hero” is. Captain Marvel
specifically is the first female lead film in the MCU since its 2008 reboot. It acts as an implicit statement about heroic ability vis a vis gender. It’s also about a person
discovering, and at the same time overcoming, their history…
As a hero, two different kinds of soldier, and a friend.

Carol Danvers formulates her identity while trying to discern what is hers, versus what has been forced upon – and expected of – her. This is a meaningful story to be told
about a female superhero in 2019.

Upset Internet Men bemoaned this as a bid for PC points. They became further incensed by Brie Larson’s evidence-based
comments about the lack of diversity in comics-films press, leading to negative vote brigading and
a new review policy on Rotten Tomatoes: no audience reviews are calculated until AFTER premiere now.

So - ok - a queen
oop, nope sorry, I mean a QUEEN
there we go…

… can move any number of tiles in any direction on the chess board. What is Captain Marvel’s
gambit on the field of popular culture?

You could argue this is Incorporation searching for Compromise Equilibrium in response to past criticism from Resistance concerning female representation in hero films.
In turn,
those who benefit from, enjoy or are simply comfortable with the old hegemonic order become upset.

Or maybe the hegemonic assertion is found in Captain Marvel’s officially unofficial status as …
an Air Force recruitment tool – reinforcing the power of the military apparatus, as well as its relationship to “heroism” and “innovation”.

And surely there are

 http://bit.ly/2HNByQ5

additional perspectives to take, depending upon your own. They may be subtle; they may not be on the face of a work, but in its production. They are gambits
nonetheless. Finding what power is asserted in media and how is part of the negotiation that forms hegemonic struggle. Weighing how impactful that assertion is,
weighing the good versus the bad… all part of the negotiation. Complaining we SHOULDN’T BE WORRIED ABOUT THIS and everyone just needs to chill out … also part
of the negotiation. Sorry.

Unlike a chess piece, media objects don’t always represent a single gambit. Different perspectives sit in the same frame. They are … works of art, after all.

This is why
popular media is so ripe for deep, philosophical consideration. It’s ideal for serious, intellectual study for the exact reason many people disqualify it: it is entertainment.
It’s easily accessible material that people are unintimidated by, invested in, and knowledgable about. But it also reflects the complex, often politically charged conditions
of its creation. And perhaps most valuably: pop culture media provides a conceptual, rhetorical starting point for the vast diversity of people who comprise its audience.

Superhero films, crime procedurals, and video games are - and should be appreciated as - meeting places for complex conversations between people who would never
converge otherwise. It’s around and through these stories that we may confront meaningful issues, and – if we’re lucky, persistent or both – enact meaningful change in
the much, much broader social environment.
 Popular Culture isn’t just

a site of struggle –
It is also the thing to be

won or lost in that struggle

Media represents and responds to always shifting structures of power. As such, we are more than “audience members” or “consumers” - we are active participants,
always, in the formation of a common sense that guides the world, and the people in it.
 ✅ Intro

✅ Media and Popular Culture

✅ Bids for Power

▶ Identity and ⬜ The Algorithm

[you gotta take a drink of water? do it here my dude]

Stuart Hall wrote that media augments what we get at
 http://bit.ly/2TxOYBG

home, from our family and at school. The media is a socializing force, he argued, in that it depicts ideas about the
operation of society which – though fictional in some cases – we cannot help but “learn” from.

Our media habits help us form a

 FEELS

catalog of orientations towards the world, and values that reflect those orientations.

We don’t take the messages of the media we

 http://bit.ly/2TA2TaC

consume whole cloth, and convert them into personal mandates on how to act or what to believe. We negotiate with ourselves and our community – picking and
choosing, challenging, accepting, comparing, building and always rebuilding a self in response to endless stimulus.

And just - a slight

 ( )

digression: it’s not just teenagers who are guided through the pitch dark wilderness of identity to the relative security of self by, like, records and movies. We are all
guided by umpteen different forces including but not limited to TV shows, YouTubers, podcasts, books and video games. We are guided so throughout our lives, if we
allow. There isn’t an age at which you must become an impenetrable Brick of Self. As it was put to me on Twitter recently:

“be gelatin, be free”.

Popular culture is, arguably, the greatest contributor this highly mediated process of self discovery, and there’s been a great expansion of its territory over the last 20 or
so years. Like a body of water snaking through, the internet has molded, and been molded by that territory. Low barriers to entry have been worn ever lower. The ability
to find media which speaks to you, or to find an audience for your media, is significantly easier than in a broadcast-only ecosystem.

As such, the internet has been a remarkable tool in the variegated process of discovering, molding, and remolding the self. The internet makes available
as vast a catalog of orientations, attitudes and identities – and the media which reflects, and embodies them – as one could ever want.

It certainly dwarfs my generation’s catalog par excellence: the local

shopping mall.

The internet helps

lay bare ways of being, opens up untold ontological possibility and
provides guideposts for identity which may not have been otherwise available in one’s environment, or the corners of pop culture reserved for mainstream media.

With the help of the internet, people are able to ask if they may be a
Nerdfighter or a
Speedrunner or
an activist or
a k-pop fan who lives 6000 miles away from korea or (don’t laugh)
 http://bit.ly/2FyY4te

a furry

In the past I’ve called this identity window shopping, or

 Disintermediation of the Self

“disintermediation of the self”, which is really just a twenty-dollar way of saying the internet circumvents some of the old, heavily localized, and more emotionally draining
challenges of self discovery. Like say … trying to find a ride to the
Hot Topic in 1997, and standing there
In front of the t-shirt grid sans-google for two hours, unsure of which goth band communicates most clearly who you are as person while the employees sorta half self-
consciously snicker at you.

It ended up being
Bauhaus, by the way. But it took me a really long time to figure that out!

The internet hasn’t made figuring out who you are… easy, by any means. But if my decade and a half of experience with large online communities is worth anything,
global networking technology has been an extremely welcome, and helpful tool for many, many people. It has helped them find themselves …

and find a community. Fandom

 http://bit.ly/2TyHgaK

and communities of interest have existed for much longer than the internet, but their prevalence and power are some of the internet’s most significant precipitates:
people who are invested in something can find other people who are also invested in it, they can organize around it and in so doing reaffirm their sense of self, as well as
impact the cultural landscape. They become ENGAGED in themselves, their environment and the pop cultural landscape… through it.

No wonder there is great

dedication to fandom. And no wonder it’s designed for: the internet in the age of
social media is premised upon COMMUNITIES.

Which are important to individuals, because we are … human and require

 INTERNET FRENS

social cohesion to feel whole, but communities are also the golden prize for platforms, brands, corporations, media entities, artists, and digital creators. Communities are
invested, powerful, and look favorably upon whatever brought them together because, likely, it informs some part of their … identity.

This has lead … to immeasurably positive impacts. Beyond the rare pleasure of … finding yourself… the cohesion of vast and invested communities in popular culture
has
helped it become a site of increasingly equitable struggle.

We should be clear: the internet is both a cause, and symptom of this change. It is reflective of, and intensifies, the bright light of social progress. The coherence of
communities – many of the largest with and around media, especially social media – have shown that local concerns are global; that small problems are widespread; and
that many personal concerns and challenges are anything but. In short: no one need be alone.

The LGBTQIA community, people of color, people living with disabilities or mental illness, targets of harassment, the poor, the civically disenfranchised and other
previously underrepresented groups are able, FINALLY, to speak collectively … and now loud enough about what they face. They are able to speak truth to - or at the
very least NEAR - power.
As those communities grow, and their conversations get louder, they begin to sway “common sense”. It is hard, slow work - that occasionally comes with a cost, true - of
vulnerability, of harassment – and it will likely never be truly finished - but it is uplifting: a site of hope, and a model for how power CAN shift, and people CAN shift it.

The internets ability to cohere communities, strengthen their connections and amplify their impact has also had …
 CW: Hate

immeasurably negative consequences. The world at large struggles, and so too does the internet struggle, with…

◦ Flat eathers

◦ Anti-vaxxers

◦ Climate Conspiracy Theorists

◦ Gamergaters

◦ Nazis and white surpremacists

We can’t, of course, blame the internet for the existence of conspiracy theorists, serial harassers or hateful monsters any more than we can blame it for the existence of
celebratory fandoms. These things are part and parcel with larger, social issues that have – as digital media folklorist Whitney Phillips describes – wide, and intermingled
roots.

But we can, and should, ask about how certain platforms spread media espousing hateful ideas, giving them the visibility they desire, thus helping to cohere communities
that adopt those ideas as part of their identity. And then ask: what can we do about that?

Now … let’s talk about the algorithm

 ✅ Intro

✅ Media and Popular Culture

✅ Bids for Power

✅ Identity and ▶ The Algorithm

As you use certain online services and platforms, you are

 👀

surveilled, and a sort of model-you is built from your activities. An algorithm - what I called
 i, *the* algorithm

The Algorithm earlier, though there are many instances of it - uses that model to show you stuff, in the hopes of profiting from you.

Netflix pays close attention to your watch history and surfaces movies based upon a % match against it’s Imagined You.

So it may notice, or decide, you’re the kind of person who is into

MOVIES FEATURING A STRONG FEMALE LEAD. Spotify and
Apple Music are similar; currently I’m being shown mostly, well - after all that talk about Hot Topic, a New Order record probably isn’t a surprise…

YouTube
autoplays videos from its
RECOMMENDED or UP NEXT bar, populated with content influenced by your subscriptions and watch history, though that’s not always the case. More on that soon. And
 https://cnn.it/2CDp8GO

Twitter has started surfacing tweets from accounts you don’t follow, but which the algorithm has reason to believe you will ENGAGE with.

Now - there’s a view of this which finds it … innocuous. Or. Even

 👍
preferable. Maybe you give up some
 👀

privacy – but in return you get things that are meaningful. It’s a
vast content ocean out there, finding stuff is hard so why NOT have the robots sort it all? I do love synthpop, strong female leads and
*squints* 277777788888899. Who cares if someone PROFITS

Another view finds the assumptions of …

 👀

The algorithm … claustrophobic. Rather than bringing the world to us, algorithmic recommendation
hems us in. It constructs an unseen, unknowable identity which you may be able to steer provisionally but which is impossible to escape entirely. The models built of us
represent a kind of
 “277777788888899” ???????????????

http://bit.ly/2Fz3GUk

trajectory the software thinks we’ll follow: you ARE the kind of person who is interested in synthpop, strong female leads and … 277777788888899? Right? I mean…
other people are. We think we’ve got a 93% match here!

And, truthfully,

I love these records. They’re great and I listen to them a lot but … I sometimes wonder if I’d be listening to them if they weren’t served to me on a silver iTunes platter. The
more I listen, the more they’re served up and it just becomes … easier? To be the person the algorithm sees me as.

Or maybe I am this person, and the algorithm more easily lets me be myself, by providing access to things I don’t otherwise have? Which… is also the case. It’s
complicated…

Philosopher
Jean Paul Sartre famously wrote that
 Hell
Is

Other people

“hell is other people”. We can’t not see ourselves through the eyes of others. We constantly make and remake ourselves in consideration of how we’re observed, and in
so doing sacrifice some aspect of our freedom as individuals. But we must, it’s not a choice. Is the Algorithm more of the same? Is hell also …
 Hell
Is

Other people’s
Algorithms

Other People’s Algorithms?

I don’t ask this question as one about free will … The Algorithm isn’t minting identities. It is a give and a take; a negotiation between many different forces, including
computer code. But the algorithm can … corral, or maybe … funnel identities: starting people in one broad place, and brining them along to another… much more
specific, perhaps treacherous one

Sociologist…
 http://bit.ly/2JJIU9R

Zeynep Tufekci noticed something about YouTube, specifically, which we’re gonna focus on for the rest of this talk. She noticed that when she searched for vegetarian
recipes … she was recommended

vegan videos. And when she searched for running tips, she got
ultra marathon videos. Uhhh - I wasn’t able to replicate that result, but when searching how to run a 5k, I was recommended
HOW TO WIN A STREET FIGHT and

A list of reasons why women think I am unattractive, from a channel called MANTELLIGENCE DATING.

This is the YouTube rabbit hole. It starts you out in a

fine and friendly place, and brings you – as
the classic rabbit hole did – to another world.

I’ve experienced this myself … I used to be a run of the mill

guitar player and now I own a
modular synth. IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU.

Tufekci, curious how far this would go, started searching

political topics and sure enough, noticed that news-related search terms resuled in increasingly polarized recommendations.

How and why the algorithm works this way is up for debate. Tufekci guessed its
 https://nyti.ms/2Fv7p5e

quote-“the computational exploitation of a natural human desire: to look “behind the curtain,” to dig deeper into something that engages us” She compares it to fatty
foods which we’re evolutionary inclined to enjoy, but which hurt us if overindulged in.
Journalist Conor Friedersdorf thinks that over a long enough time scale, fringe content might reach a kind of critical mass, both in volume and viewership. After all, those
videos represent the unfamiliar, the forbidden. Perhaps the algorithm mistakes this slow burning interest as potential for broad appeal if algorithmically surfaced?

Twitter Co-founder
 https://nyti.ms/2JLDcEl

Ev Williams has said the internet, generally, goes out of its way to provide metaphoric car crashes - David Streitfield of the New York Times paraphrases him, writing

 https://nyti.ms/2JLDcEl

“Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car
crashes, so it tries to supply them.”

In short, perhaps this is the old broadcast truism of If It Bleeds It Leads, at scale.
 http://bit.ly/2CCYFct

Buzzfeed recently followed YouTubes recommendations down “the rabbit hole” with a fresh browser. They were lead to ”conspiracy videos, hyper-partisan and
misogynist videos, pirated videos, and content from hate groups following common news-related searches” … within 9 autoplay recommendations.

 http://bit.ly/2CERwZh

The Daily Beast spoke with “former extremists” at the end of last year. They identified YouTube as a particularly strong force in their radicalization. They would go looking
for video game content, pop culture or mainstream political commentary and they would be guided to increasingly niche, and extreme viewpoints by a combination of the
technology, the community, and the videos themselves.
 http://bit.ly/2CBp1f6

At the end of 2018, technology researcher Becca Lewis conducted a study for Data and Society and found ”a giant network of influencers on YouTube … broadcasting
reactionary ideas to young viewers - and radicalizing them in the process.”

And last month, Australian researcher

 http://bit.ly/2CDSJ38

Nicolas Suzor checked if YouTube continued to recommend those accounts. He found their recommendation numbers tanked amongst a general audience, but that
controversial content was still easily found, and recommended, with the right, and seemingly innocuous search strings. Suzor describes this as
 http://bit.ly/2CDSJ38

”The problem of personalization”: YouTube will cater to the identity it has built for you, and seems to assume a lot about that identity. He finds, for instance, that while
anti-vaccination videos are not GENERALLY recommended, they are front and center under a simple search for “flu shot”.

So… someone performs a simple search, hoping to watch a mainstream, political commentator or video game stream on YouTube. They’re rabbit-holed through
increasingly niche and “extreme” content to virulently racist, even literal nazi propaganda.
The media they find, and communities which gather around it, prey upon curiosity, anxiety, lack of self esteem and even plain old innocence. This complex of things leads
to the formation of an identity, as happens in mediated communities, which then quickly becomes difficult to abandon, because one would abandon their SELF and their
FRIENDS.
 INTERNET FRENS

The youtube videos around which white supremacists – or climate change deniers or antifeminists and so on – gather become more impactful thanks to the communities
they cohere, the identities they inform, the attention they command.

Like important pieces of media do, they can have an impact on the much larger, emotional-affective environment outside of their direct audience, and platform of choice.
The can, in fact, help guide the creation of … “common sense”.
Now - whether or not we might say this media has found its way “into” popular culture isn’t as important as the fact it can LOOK LIKE it has, by most if not all the
measures we discussed at the start of this talk:

 Things Which Have Achieved

“Numeric Success”

Large video view counts or a successful Patreon look like widespread adoption.
 Anything with “Broad Appeal”

Slick production makes a video look professional and non-controversial. A more

 NOT Paintings
NOT Ballet
NOT Opera
NOT Haute Couture

Amateur look can make a video seem down to earth and “authentic”.

A messy, slapdash aesthetic can make a video look opposed to the “high” culture of the powers that be.
 🍖
💪
Even looking at pop culture as site of hegemonic struggle - climate deniers can play downtrodden free thinkers. Misogynists, as advocates for the lowly male in light of
the destructive Feminist Agenda. White supremacists can say they are simply proud of their heritage.

Their rightly-controversial views spark outrage, and consternation … which is then framed as an attack on their freedoms, and of course: their identity. Which gives
license to masquerade as an oppressed group seeking recognition from whoever they frame as the moral and intellectual leadership.

But … how OFTEN is this happening? Am I worried that … the internet is overrun with nazis, and YouTube is the endless slime extruder pumping them out?

Arguably once is … too often, but … no. I don’t think the internet is overrun with nazis.

But … I do think it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. And we can’t rely on YouTube to fix it. For one, because they’re slow; they’re worried about lawsuits; and
content moderation is extremely difficult. It has high economic and EMOTIONAL costs.

 http://bit.ly/2JKr4n8

THOUGH IT IS HEARTENING that in the last 48 hours Facebook has stepped up and said it will ban white nationalist, ethnostate and supremacist content, outright. And
redirect anyone posting it to a de-radicalization nonprofit.

Video, however, is AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE HARDER to moderate than text and photos, and besides…
Even if YouTube could take action the way Facebook is - this isn’t REALLY a YouTube problem. I mean - they should do something about it – and its galling they haven’t
done more, or been more vocal up to this point – but I mean more like… when there’s a leak in the ceiling you don’t mop the floor hoping it’ll stop the rain.

YouTube has a problem, and it is VERY important that it get solved. Quickly. But their problems are also reflective of a broader, social issues.
Contrary to much of the reporting around the New Zealand shooting - I don’t think this was a massacre for the internet. It was a massacre. And also the internet exists.
There is no line separating islamophobia and digital islamophobia. They are the same. thing. The online and not-online are reflective of one another, exist within the same
structures and emotional-affective environments. They are reflective of the same fears, and anxieties that go unchecked thanks to same social and interpersonal
shortcomings.

As has been the case with

 http://bit.ly/2TyHgaK

countless other communities, the internet has been a great tool for spreading a message which neither originates on, nor requires … the internet.
The Christchurch shooter formulated his identity online, in response to a complex, mediated environment which stokes the flames of islamophobia on and off-line. The
media he saw had a great impact on him, and he dreamed his own would be likewise impactful.

He wanted most to pollute the affective-emotional environment, to drive discord, and … if not contribute to the formulation of a particular common sense … then use
media tactics to make the formation of an equitable common sense more difficult.

These are not internet problems, but problems which involve the internet.

Still we are not powerless. There are things we can do … ON and WITH the internet, to help. I’m gonna wrap up with some ideas.
 1

First, to paraphrase Kate Klonick on the Techdirt podcast: we should be accepting of the difficulty with large scale content moderation. It’s not IMPOSSIBLE, but several
orders of magnitude more difficult than people assume, and tech companies make it out to be.

HOWEVER - we also should not be COMPLIANT in a stuck status quo, nor the continuance of current trends. We must pressure online content services – which function
as public spaces but which are private entities – to find the moral courage to stand up to hateful ideologies, as Facebook has recently.
 2

Second- we should adopt what Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner describe as robust Online Ethics.

 http://bit.ly/2JLjrN5

There are often calls for civility in these and related conversations. Civility is bullshit. It doesn’t work, and it’s great fuel for concern trolling and tone policing. A robust
online ethics doesn’t mean being quiet, or kind. It doesn’t mean “keeping your feather unruffled”, but “taking full and unqualified responsibility for the things you choose
to do and say.”

Philips and Milner use the metaphor of a biomass pyramid

 http://bit.ly/2JGPeie

Even the largest apex predators depend on seemingly insignificant insects. If the insects disappear, the apex predators are threatened through a series of ecological
domino drops.

The same is true for hate speech: apex predators, in the form of actual white supremacists, rely on an environment supported at much lower levels by game streamers
making edgy anti-semitic jokes, or using racial slurs to insult opponents.

YouTuber NonCompete calls this the

 http://bit.ly/2JJ3pTX

PewDiePipeline, after the worlds first or second most subscribed to YouTuber, depending upon which day you look.

Piewdiepie has been embroiled in several high profile scandals - for payting two Indian men to hold up a sign showing an anti-semetic message, for dressing up as Hitler,
for using racist language in streams, etc. These scandals lead to the cancelling of a partnership he had with Disney, and many defenses from his fans who raised a
chorus of
IT WAS JUST A JOOOOOOOOOOOOOKE

I don’t think Felix is an actual nazi, but his actions help normalize heinous behavior on a platform, and general social environment, struggling with literal murderous, racist
extremists.
 http://bit.ly/2JJ3pTX

The Pewdiepipe line explains how the seemingly mere-rhetorical performance of hate actually creates an increasing comfort with the ideas that underly that performance,
and inspire that hate. “Just jokes” can open a rabbit hole for those inclined to stare further into the abyss of extremism.
 http://bit.ly/2JKaCDa

Know Your Meme editor Matt Schimkowitz spoke with the Verge about this process. He explains how flat earth memes and jokes “gives those people with predisposed
dispositions the opportunity to delve further into a theory.”

 http://bit.ly/2JLhEYF

YouTuber Faraday speaks, a self described former “alt-lite” member, describes a similar journey… video games, edgy memes, and the very same Influence Network from
Becca Lewis study… and eventually… earnest anxiety about the birthrates of the white race.

He describes the process as a “marketing funnel” - designed to advance those who tolerate the jokes and the irony, and eject those who dont.
 http://bit.ly/2JLjrN5

An “Online Ethics” recognizes the impact of insect sized actions, which sustain an environment comfortable for predators. Snarking, rushing to judgement, piling on,
extreme irony, edgelord nonsense and “it was just a joke” racism all set a welcoming tone for people who can plausibly deny their intentions, but in truth aren’t joking.

This is a hard habit to break, especially on the internet where extremes are rewarded, where car crashes are showered with sweet, sweet METRICS. Philips and Milner
write “the first step towards making more ethical choices is acknowledging how the deck has been stacked against making more ethical choices.”
 3

Third. When you hear about an internet car crash, or see one on the horizon - a white supremacist video, a flat earth or climate denial screed, a killer’s manifesto – don’t
look at it.

As simple as that.

If you must, for professional reasons, do so in such a way that doesn’t juice its reach or perceived popularity. And don’t share it.
 Finally

And finally - you should

 make things

make things. Adopt a robust online ethics, make media which reflects it, and find a place for that media in the struggle of popular culture. Build a community around it - it
doesn’t have to be big. That’ll be tough: YouTube, especially, will remind you CONSTANTLY that your numbers could be higher. The algorithm will reward, and wants you
make, a car crash. Don’t.

Talk about your ideas, or make stories which reflect them. Tweet. Instagram. Tiktok. Whatever you dig. Celebrate an inclusive worldview and invite those in your
community to do the same. If you want to tackle tough, political topics directly… instead of denying the heinous thoughts of others – debunking them, reking them,
destroying them with facts and logic – affirm your own ideas. Give people something to believe in, not against.

Do not amplify hate; provide an alternative to it.

Kevin Roose, for the New York Times writes, “The internet is now the place where the seeds of extremism are planted and watered, where platform incentives guide
creators toward the ideological poles, and where people with hateful and violent beliefs can find and feed off one another.”

The internet is not, by any means, the place, as we’ve discussed. But it is ONE place where these seeds, and the resultant plants, are watered. It’s our job, as media
makers - commentators - critics - to WATER A DIFFERENT PLANT. Give people another tree to bark up. Accept, and demonstrate, that the self is ALWAYS being molded
and remolded. Don’t suffer snark; don’t shelter casual racism; and be sincere, whatever that is for you: the author, the creator, the gardener.
 make things

Make things - make things, make things, make things. Make art, make science and do academic study but when and wherever possible: make media that belongs in
popular culture, because THAT is where this struggle is.

Help guide common sense…

 💪
And if we’re lucky, persistent, or both … we might enact meaningful change in the much, much broader social environment.

THAT is the challenge we face in the media today, and tomorrow.

Thank you.
@mikerugnetta
Bibliography
Bold denotes quoted directly in the talk

BOOKS

• Gramsci, Antonio: Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds, trans

• Hall, Stuart: Notes on Deconstructing the Popular

• Hall, Stuart and Whannel, Paddy: The Popular Arts

• Phillips, Whitney and Milner, Ryan: Ambivalent Internet

• Storey, John: Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, 5th ed

• Williams, Raymond: The Long Revolution

REPORTS

• Cheney-Lippold, John: A New Algorithmic Identity; Soft Biopolitics and the Modulation of Control

• Lewis, Becca: Alternative Influence; Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube

https://datasociety.net/output/alternative-influence/

• Phillips, Whitney: The Oxygen of Amplification https://datasociety.net/output/oxygen-of-amplification/

Bibliography Cont’d
NEWS / POSTS

• Alexander, Julia: Logan Paul’s satirical flat Earth doc gets to the heart of YouTube’s recommendation issue https://
www.theverge.com/2019/3/22/18277131/logan-paul-flat-earth-conspiracy-youtube-recommendation-algorithm

• Alexander, Julia: Why can’t YouTube automatically catch re-uploads of disturbing footage? https://www.theverge.com/
2019/3/15/18267424/new-zealand-shooting-youtube-video-reupload-content-id-livestream

• Anderson, Sulome: The twin hatreds https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2019/03/22/feature/how-white-

supremacy-and-islamist-terrorism-strengthen-each-other-online/?utm_term=.47f915e2fd03

• Coaston, Jane: The New Zealand shooter’s manifesto shows how white nationalist rhetoric spreads https://www.vox.com/
identities/2019/3/15/18267163/new-zealand-shooting-christchurch-white-nationalism-racism-language

• Cole, Yussef: Fortnite's Appropriation Issue Isn't About Copyright Law, It's About Ethics https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/
article/a3bkgj/fortnite-fortnight-black-appropriation-dance-emote

• Dwoskin, Elizabeth and Timberg, Craig: Inside YouTube’s struggles to shut down video of the New Zealand shooting — and the
humans who outsmarted its systems https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/18/inside-youtubes-struggles-shut-
down-video-new-zealand-shooting-humans-who-outsmarted-its-systems/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.25594fa6efea
Bibliography Cont’d
NEWS / POSTS Cont’d

• Friedersdorf, Conor: YouTube Extremism and the Long Tail https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/

youtube-extremism-and-the-long-tail/555350/

• Fussell, Sidney: Why the New Zealand Shooting Video Keeps Circulating https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/
2019/03/facebook-youtube-new-zealand-tragedy-video/585418/

• Haskin, Caroline: The Christchurch Terror Attack Isn’t an 'Internet' Terror Attack https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/
qvyagp/the-christchurch-terror-attack-isnt-an-internet-terror-attack

• Keller, Jared: 'Captain Marvel' Is The Recruiting Tool Of The Air Force's Dreams https://taskandpurpose.com/captain-marvel-air-
force-recruiting

• Kupfer, Theodore: A Mass Murder for the Age of Sh**posting https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/a-mass-murder-for-the-

age-of-shposting/

• Lavin, Talia: How YouTube facilitates right-wing radicalization https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/09/25/How-YouTube-

facilitates-right-wing-radicalization/221407

• Lorenz, Taylor: The Shooter’s Manifesto Was Designed to Troll https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/the-

shooters-manifesto-was-designed-to-troll/585058/
Bibliography Cont’d
NEWS / POSTS Cont’d

• Masnick, Mick: If You Think Big Internet Companies Are Somehow To Blame For The New Zealand Massacre, You're Wrong
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190317/18200841813/if-you-think-big-internet-companies-are-somehow-to-blame-new-
zealand-massacre-youre-wrong.shtml

• Milner, Ryan M and Phillips, Whitney: The Internet Doesn't Need Civility, It Needs Ethics https://motherboard.vice.com/
en_us/article/pa5gxn/the-internet-doesnt-need-civility-it-needs-ethics

• Newton, Casey: Tech platforms should fight Islamophobia the way they fought ISIS. https://www.theverge.com/interface/
2019/3/21/18275080/christchurch-facebook-youtube-terrorism-isis-islamophobia

• O'Donovan, Warzel, et al: We Followed YouTube’s Recommendation Algorithm Down The Rabbit Hole https://
www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/down-youtubes-recommendation-rabbithole

• Roose, Kevin: A Mass Murder of, and for, the Internet https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/technology/facebook-
youtube-christchurch-shooting.html

• Timberg, Harwel, et al: The New Zealand shooting shows how YouTube and Facebook spread hate and violent images — yet
again https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/15/facebook-youtube-twitter-amplified-video-christchurch-mosque-
shooting
Bibliography Cont’d
NEWS / POSTS Cont’d

• Tufekci, Zeynep: YouTube, the Great Radicalizer https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-

radical.html?module=inline

• Tufekci, Zeynep: YouTube's Recommendation Algorithm Has a Dark Side https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/youtubes-

recommendation-algorithm-has-a-dark-side/

• Victor, Daniel: In Christchurch, Signs Point to a Gunman Steeped in Internet Trolling https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/world/
asia/new-zealand-gunman-christchurch.html

• Weill, Kelly: How YouTube Built a Radicalization Machine for the Far-Right https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-youtube-pulled-
these-men-down-a-vortex-of-far-right-hate

Bibliography Cont’d

VIDEO

• Faraday Speaks: My Descent into the Alt-Right Pipeline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfLa64_zLrU

• NonCompete: The PewDiePipeline: how edgy humor leads to violence https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=pnmRYRRDbuw

PODCASTS

• Masnick, Beaton, et al: Techdirt Podcast Episode 183: No Easy Answers For Content Moderation https://
www.techdirt.com/articles/20180918/12284140666/techdirt-podcast-episode-183-no-easy-answers-content-
moderation.shtml
• Poisson, Jayme: Front Burner Podcast, "How far right influencers thrive on YouTube" https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcasts/front-
burner/