by Scott Samuelson

The other day I got unaccountably angry listening to an old playlist on my laptop. I was chopping vegetables, simmering a sauce, and nostalgically grooving to some rare soul songs that I’d assembled back in the day when you bought $.99 tunes for your iPod.

Suddenly I was confused. Had I put this song on the playlist? It was a good tune and all, but I had no memory of especially digging it.

When the next song came on, it dawned on me. The algorithm had taken over and was riffing on my playlist. I almost hurled my laptop across the room.

It wasn’t that the new songs were bad. The new songs were good. The algorithm was doing a workmanlike job, as algorithms do.

And it hardly surprised me that the algorithm kicked in. Like you and everyone else in our hellscape, demonic algorithms relentlessly poke and prod me. What would be genuinely surprising is if an insanely wealthy company decided for the sake of its customers not to employ enshittifying manipulation for the sake of getting even more insanely wealthy.

So why did I get so angry?

Part of it was the contrast. I’d picked out every one of the songs on my playlist because I loved them. Originally, I’d made the playlist, burned it onto a disc, and given it to a friend—with songs that I’d happily purchased either on CD (which I’d then downloaded onto my laptop) or on iTunes (back in the glory days of Steve Jobs).

What really made me mad was that the soulless algorithm was inhabiting otherwise wonderful music. It was a bit like that moment in the horror movies when the main character realizes that his crush has turned into a slobbering zombie.

The experience got me thinking about a question I’ve often wondered about. Is a song a better song when it’s offered with love? Had I picked out those last soul songs instead of an algorithm, would that fact alone have made them more soulful tunes? To me it seems obvious that the answer is yes. Read more »