We Used to Have Trends—Now We Just Have Algorithms
https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/tech-gaming/we-used-to-have-trends-now-we-just-have-algorithms/
There was a time when discovering a new band felt like finding buried treasure. You had to dig — through liner notes, record store crates, your cool friend’s burned CD. Trends weren’t handed to us. They were hard-earned, shaped by subcultures, cities and communities. They started in church basements, garage shows and blog comment sections. But in 2025, that process feels gone.
We don’t discover anymore. We scroll. We don’t explore — we’re fed. And while it might seem like we’re just saving time, the tradeoff is far bigger than most of us realize.
That’s the argument behind Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, Kyle Chayka’s new manifesto for anyone who’s ever wondered why every Airbnb looks the same, why Spotify’s Discover Weekly feels like déjà vu and why every new TikTok microtrend dies within days. His warning is clear: algorithms didn’t just reorganize culture. They hollowed it out.
“Algorithmic recommendations are addictive because they are always subtly confirming your own cultural, political and social biases,” Chayka writes. “Warping your surroundings into a mirror image of yourself while doing the same for everyone else.”
In other words, you’re not just being fed things you might like — you’re being fed a safer, sanitized version of yourself. Over and over again. What used to be culture — something shaped by humans, place and context — has been reduced to content: engineered for engagement, optimized for reach and stripped of anything too slow, weird or challenging to go viral.
Welcome to Filterworld.
The genius of Filterworld is that it feels comfortable. Spotify knows your vibe before you do. TikTok finishes your sentence. Netflix shows you a movie you’ll probably be fine with. But as Chayka points out, that convenience masks something more insidious: “In passively consuming what I was interested in, had I given up my agency to figure out what was truly meaningful to me?”
That question cuts deeper than a gripe about the Explore page. For Christian twentysomethings — people trying to form convictions, communities and callings in a sea of noise — it’s a spiritual question, too.
When we let algorithms decide what we see, we’re not just outsourcing taste. We’re outsourcing curiosity, community — even discernment.
Chayka doesn’t hate tech. He’s not suggesting we all delete our accounts and go live off the grid. But he is trying to make us notice just how quietly the flattening has happened. Take his description of what thrives in Filterworld: content that is “accessible, replicable, participatory and ambient.”
Think about that. It’s why worship music sounds increasingly similar. It’s why churches are swapping stained glass for exposed brick. It’s why your feed is full of influencers who all speak in the same breathy tone and post identical “Bible and matcha” reels. When culture is curated by engagement metrics, anything messy, hard or uncategorizable gets filtered out. And in its place, we get safe, endless sameness.
“All kinds of cultural experiences have been reduced to the homogenous category of digital content and made to obey the law of engagement,” Chayka writes.
That law doesn’t care whether something is meaningful or true. It just cares that you’ll watch the next one. And the next. And the next.
For people of faith, this should raise alarm bells. Because the gospel is not ambient. It’s not optimized. It’s not algorithm-friendly. Christianity asks for discomfort, transformation and time — three things Filterworld actively discourages.
We weren’t made to live in a frictionless echo chamber. We were made for community, nuance and holy tension. That means sometimes not watching the most popular thing. Sometimes saying no to the playlist Spotify made for you. Sometimes picking the book you’ve never heard of over the one trending on TikTok.
It also means paying attention to what we’ve lost — the serendipity of discovery, the joy of collective movement, the beauty of local. In Filterworld, everything is everywhere all at once — flattened into the same vibe. And while that might sound like inclusivity, it often becomes the opposite. It dulls difference. It rewards conformity. It suffocates emergence.
So what do we do?
Chayka recommends something like an “algorithmic cleanse.” It’s not about deleting everything. It’s about waking up to how deeply we’ve let the feed shape our lives — and then choosing something better. Subscribe to an actual magazine. Visit your local record store. Watch a movie a friend recommends instead of the Netflix homepage. Read something with footnotes.
Most of all, pay attention to what’s forming you.
Because algorithms don’t just serve culture — they shape it. And as followers of Christ, we’re called to something deeper than passive consumption. Romans 12 tells us not to conform to the patterns of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by intention.
“You may not use social media,” Chayka warns, “but it’s using you.”
That’s not just a hot take. It’s a gut check.
So maybe the real rebellion today isn’t going viral. It’s not keeping up. Maybe it’s choosing slowness. Obscurity. Substance. Maybe the most countercultural thing we can do in 2025 is make our own playlist — and then turn off autoplay.
Because in a world of endless content, real culture still matters — and it’s worth digging for.
Religion
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April 30, 2025 at 09:18PM
