The Narrator asks Tyler Durden," If you could fight any celebrity, who would you fight? Tyler says, "Hemingway, while the Narrator replies, "Shatner, I would fight William Shatner."
If you know, you know...That's from Fight Club. I'm assuming you've watched that movie, and if you haven't, well, maybe you're not in your mid-forties like me. But if you are, then what you likely know is that the 90s produced timeless stories, because they represent the beginning of the end of the way we share those stories as content consumption was slowly transforming to a digital, vertical, 90-second or less, social-media driven world view fueled by a set of mathematics programmed to learn us better than we know ourselves.
Now, it's as if we're being stalked by the world's most diligent note taker, studying our every move as it attempts to not only predict our behavior and feed us more of what we desire as a means to entertain us. At least that's what I used to believe naively.
Of course, you can throw all of this away and pass it off as some "lunatic" who's spent too much time paying attention inside the rabbit hole of social media, and to that I would say, "fair." The truth is, I have, but not always because I want to; now I've found myself in a world where I almost have to.
Think of it this way before you draw your own conclusion: "What do you do for work?" Everyone is in sales just as much as everyone is in marketing these days, and we're all just doing our best to make ends meet, and hopefully excel at it, aren't we?
So, here we are, in a constant battle for attention (apparently that's the new currency according to some experts), as we strategize over what content to share, and how to put in the hands of the people we believe want to see it, instead, we're up against an invisible force known as the algorithm.
On one hand, we have gurus convincing us that they've learned exactly how it works, only to find out that it's changed, or worse, that they've found a way to cheat it, which, technically, on paper sounds fair with all things considered but on the other hand, we have people that instead of trying to "learn the algorithm," forego it for creating something compelling, something valuable, something they're proud of, not because it's accompanied by social proof through millions of impressions, but because they took the time to create it.
In case you can't tell yet which camp I fall into, it's the latter. Lately, I'm not thinking of ways to learn an algorithm or find a way around it; I'm not thinking about it at all, asking myself the question as if I'm walking alongside the Narrator, having a conversation with my imaginary friend, "If you could fight any celebrity, alive or dead, who would you fight?"
I get that the algorithm isn't a person, and sure as hell is not a celebrity, but if I could fight it, I would, because for as much as it might believe it's giving us more and more of what we desire, it's disguised as hate and division. So, when I hear someone say, "I know the algorithm," I run, not because I know they're lying, because they likely are, but because I believe the algorithm wasn't meant to be known. If it were, how would these social media platforms make any money off of us?
Tyler, the Creator (he's a rapper that you might not have ever heard of), once said that he hired a videographer after watching a video on YouTube with only three views because it was incredibly creative and well done. I've always loved that story because it has everything to do with authenticity and originality and nothing to do with the "make-believe."
Now, when I see content that's incredibly well done, that appears to be hand-made, that's stretches over the threshold of the 90-second mark, with little to no engagement on it, I don't smirk and think to myself, "what a loser," or "I wonder how I can help them," I just nod my head to them with the notion of respect.
If you're still reading this, there's no call to action, no clever hook, and no hidden agenda. I don't stand to gain anything from you taking action here. I'm just a guy who's exhausted by the idea that we live in a world where an algorithm sits at the center of our feeds rather than our God searching for the reset button.
If that's strange to read, here's another quote from Fight Club for me to end on. As the Narrator turns to Marla Singer with a severe (and apparent) injury to his face, he says, "Trust me, everything is going to be fine. You met me at a very strange time in my life."
