🤖Algorithmic Content

M.D. Singer — June, 2025

There’s a debate around taste. People say, “AI may be better at writing code, playing chess, or doing homework, but it will never replicate human taste.” We like to think of taste as uniquely human—an expression of identity and judgment. But maybe it’s just a tool for managing choice. And maybe algorithms are getting better at it than we are.

People don’t actually like having choices—they increase our cognitive load.

• Facebook’s clean, default interface ultimately won out over MySpace’s open customization.
• People pay more for preset tasting menus than for the sprawling fare found at American diners.
• People are happier walking down narrow streets than along wide, exposed ones.

Taste acts as a heuristic—a shortcut that lightens our cognitive load. I don’t have to worry whether I’ll enjoy a Christopher Nolan movie; I trust his taste. Call it the Paradox of Choice or option anxiety—the more credible options we have, the more anxious we become (think dating, houses, jobs, etc.).

Algorithms do the thinking for us.

You could spend 30 minutes deciding what to watch on Netflix, or you could let TikTok feed you a never-ending stream of hyper-personalized content that you’re statistically likely to enjoy. The problem has shifted: from wasting time on bad content to wasting time on good content that’s too addictive. Netflix and other studios have spent billions backing producers with “taste.” But the people have voted with their thumbs. The algorithm has won.1

Netflix-and-Chill is to the 2010s as Brain Rot is to the 2020s.

The world wasn’t always flooded with content. In 1939, there was just one television network: NBC. If you wanted to watch TV, you watched NBC. Today, there’s a network for each of us — the FYP Channel.2 You're no longer defined by race, gender, or occupation.

You are now an n of 1.

Taste doesn’t lose its meaning just because it’s curated by a machine. Just as each person has a unique response to a piece of art, we each experience our personal algorithms in our own way. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein captured this idea with his “beetle in a box” analogy: each of us has a private inner experience, which language can never fully convey it.

When machines curate our experience better than we can, it doesn't mark the death of taste—just its evolution.

Word Count: 384