The capacity of the algorithm to create monsters (2023)

I love this concept from Annie Kelly, shared on the most recent episode of the QAnon Manclan podcast. She compares a prominent anti-feminist influencer to the Jewish folkloric figure of the golem, “a being created entirely from inanimate matter, but in her case the materials are likes, views and comments from the very dregs of YouTube”. Contrary to the tempting cynicism of the grifter hypothesis, Kelly suggests the influencer’s affective life has become bound up with the circuits of recognition and affirmation she is entangled within. This entanglement reflects the force with which she has chased clout, responding to what works rather than being driven by her own sense of what matters or might be instrumentally rewarding. The point is not that she is controlled by the algorithm but rather that she has been rebuilt through the social interactions which the algorithm choreographs, creating a porous self alongside a public facing monster.

It’s a casual sketch but I find it an incredibly evocative concept. Lacanian ideas of fantasy could be used to develop this philosophical anthropology, by considering how the influencer imagines their audience (the meta best friend described by the digital anthropologist Daniel Miller who completes and confirms their deliberations?) and imagines the algorithm (an oracle which reveals the truth of what is valued and penalised socially?). As Rob Horning notes, algorithmic feeds are often ‘good enough’ (an extremely evocative term in Winnicottian psychoanalysis, though I don’t think he means it in this sense) in the sense of elevating the user and affirming their individuality:

But most algorithmic feeds fail most of the time; they don’t consistently evoke a convincing sense of their omnipotence, despite users’ occasional projective fantasy that algorithms can read their thoughts or know them better than they know themselves. Algorithmic feeds are often serially disappointing, but the nature of app interfaces is such that we usually scroll past these failures quickly without too much trauma. They seem to be good enough for most users, probably because they are palpably trying; their very existence positions the user at the center of the universe as a unique being with special needs.

But I’d suggest this is a practical relationship with an affective pay off, rather than a fantasy per se. What constitutes the fantasy is the sense of a special feature latent within the object, which animates it and makes it sparklingly desirable in some way as impossible to pin down as it is difficult to resist. The loss of this special hidden X can be catastrophic, leading to a deflation of reality and collapse into a cold world. Or it can be liberating, if bewildering, at least in the short term: “why on earth was I so preoccupied with this?”. How many influencers whose strategic conduct might lead them to be dismissed as grifters are caught up in fantasies like this? It doesn’t deny their instrumental orientation but it does complicate how we should read it, as well as how we should frame our responses to them.

When I deleted my Twitter feed in late 2019 I had 16.5k followers. It wasn’t a lot in influencer terms but it was magnified by the sectoral dynamics of micro-influence, leaving me with the peculiar experience of being one of the most followed sociologists in the UK without having a secure academic job. I found this status inconsistency increasingly exhausting, leaving me with a growing sense of simply wanting to escape Twitter. I never did quite escape it, simply because I can see what a useful tool it is to develop the more secure academic career I now have. But thinking back to how I used to experience it (long before 2019) there was an obvious element of fantasy: the reliable presence of an audience who would hear and respond to my off-the-cuff thoughts.

Whereas when I use it now that sense of X described above is simply gone. For every thoughtful response, there are countless thoughtless ones. I suspect I see people all around me churning out messages in order to be seen and heard, rather than to interact (the mindless lashing out based on misreadings is the most depressing expression of this but it’s a much broader category). The fantasy is gone but still the habits remain. I find Twitter sticky in a way that I simply don’t with a platform like LinkedIn where I can post then largely forget about the fact I’ve posted. Whereas on Twitter I want to see if anyone has responded, scroll through my feed, post some more. It feels like the habits are automata left over in the absence of a fantasy that once sustained them. It suggests to me that we can never build a normal relationship with what were once potent objects of fantasy, or at least not without a degree of emotional labour for which motivation is inevitably lacking, given the decathexis involved in the death of fantasy.