It's all fun and games until a book attacks what you love: lo-fi soundscapes (I know!), coffeeshop aesthetics, and even goodreads ratings. 

Filterworld reads like a thesis, but a very good one that I enjoyed reading cover to cover. The author is only a bit older than me and our memories of the internet, and how it evolved, are similar. I found the outlining of a cohesive history, from Geocities to live journal to chatrooms to tumblr to Facebook to tiktok, engrossing and familiar. 

What this book seeks to understand is recommendation algorithms. Now, I'm suspicious of a lot Big Algo, but I've always made an exception for things like the Spotify algorithm, which still does not seem nearly as harmful to me as some others out there. But the author argues that algorithmic recommendations flatten our culture, steering us towards conflating popular with good, and turning all interests ephemeral and dictated by the whims of the Algo. 

And he has a point. There's some culture-specific examples that he dissects, and argues in favor of analogue media, hand picked curation (human DJs, not AI ones), and chronological timelines (I miss those). 

It feels ironic to give a star value to a book that argues against rating and ranking media, but I'm in too deep. Here's 4.25 stars on SG, rounded down to 4 on GR.