Issue 37: This Intelligence is Artificial
Special Report on Algorithms, AI, and the Future of Personas
For this week’s issue of High Noon, the duo is back! Griffin Wynne and I teamed up in our virtual co-working space; we’re thinking of calling it The Thigh. What do you think?
Head down to The Long Read and Watch for the week’s special report on how people are turning into algorithms, and don’t neglect the stories in The Roundup and the lovely aromatic Gin Tónica at the end of the issue.
By the way, Griff has launched their own newsletter at Kombucha Boyfriend. It’s a very fun and good addition to your lovely inbox!
xoxoSCREMES (Shawn) 🌞
The Roundup
Links to the stories you should be reading this week
Could a pandemic have fundamentally altered how we approach relationships? • It definitely has altered how we approach work relationships. • Edward Said’s Orientalism was an unexpected bestseller and has left a complicated legacy. • In the Czech Republic, the ancient dead linger in sculptural bone gardens. • The Gen-Z–Millennial feud over jean styles has left everyone a bit confused. • Theater Accident will present a Zoom reading of Friend-of-HN Zoë Rhulen’s new play Mommy and the Pirate April 26. • A John Lautner masterpiece hits the market in Studio City.
The Long Read
The week’s keynote story
Only going to read one thing? Read me.
Addison the Algorithm and Other Scary Stories | Shawn Cremer & Griffin Wynne | HN Original
It's 11:45 on a Wednesday night1 and you flip on NBC to see Jimmy Fallon, interviewing a very special guest... Flo from Progressive!
But Flo's not real, you say. That's a character. And not just a fictional character from a movie or show, she's a fictional character from an advertisement. It's a fake person, in a fake thing, all made for you to switch car and home insurance. Maybe he could interview Stephanie Courtney, the comedian who has portrayed the character since 2008. Maybe she would come out in Flo costume as a kitschy gag. Maybe she would do the whole interview as "Flo," citing her classic lines. But still, we understand that Fallon interviewing Flo, or Courtney as Flo, would be kitsch, a joke, a bit. It wouldn't be real.
For the purpose of this essay, let's say, tonight at 11:45, Jimmy Fallon announces that he's joined by a very special guest. A TikTok teen turned mega-influencer, known for dancing, clothes, and public romance. Like so many internet people, once-categorizable TikToker teens, are expanding their personal brands to encompass a nebulous set of monikers we may not be able to mutually agree upon. By 2021, an "internet famous" person, who seemingly seems "just like us" is a household trope not dissimilar to Flo from Progressive. But where does it fall on the normality spectrum? Is it kitsch? Is it a gag? Is it real?
A few weeks ago, (on March 26) Jimmy Fallon did have Addison Rae on The Tonight Show, as a musical guest. For reasons we will never understand, she "taught" Jimmy eight TikTok dances, while The Roots played acoustic covers of popular TikTok songs. The video, included below in WATCH, is cringe-inducing, rather post-apocalyptic, and entirely mesmerizing. It feels like a reproduction of a reproduction of a reproduction. It feels like a bit, a joke, and a gag. It feels fake, but it's entirely real. And it raises a question for us.
Why do we care about Addison Rae™ in a way we don't about Flo from Progressive? Addison Rae is no less a character than Flo. She's no less scripted, simulated, or focus-grouped. It just so happens that the character and the actor portraying the character have the same name, the same public life. Flo is selling you Progessive. Addison is selling you Addison.
Part of the answer lies in the fact that over the past decade, people have started to act like the algorithms they are viewing. And not just the influencers. In a way, influencers are like engineers collaborating on a great project of algorithmification of our digital (and analog) world.
In the late 2000s, the marketers of the world invented the brilliant strategy of user-generated content (UGC) and it swiftly became the favorite hot new thing marketers and consultants recommended their clients use. Of course, user-generated content has been around long before it was given a name, but there's something about naming a thing that turns it into a commodity. In the case of UGC, explicit campaigns by brands seeking to maintain, reframe, or refurbish their image as a brand of the people, became that commodity.
Now, in the nascent years of the 2020s, UGC is ubiquitous to the point of being overused. But it has gained a companion in something we might term AIGC (Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content).
A quick Google search for the term turns up 264 Million results led by half a dozen digital tools that promise "content in minutes," "the most human AI," and to "Generate Quality Content for Your Site." The argument seems to be that these artificial intelligence engines are so good that readers and consumers won't even be able to tell they weren't written by a human. It makes it a lot easier to do that when humans are starting to act like AI.
Rather than coding the computers to become like us, we have decided to meet somewhere in the middle. 'Content' generated by AI or by users or by marketers has all started to look an awful lot alike.
As Paul Dabrowa, an artificial intelligence and social media expert told the Financial Times, TikTok’s algorithm is expressly designed to modify our behavior.
Unlike Facebook which analyses your current friendship network, Tik Tok uses a behavioural profile powered by artificial intelligence to populate a user’s feed before friends are even added. It also predicts the type of friends you should have for your personality. Once outfitted with this information, the TikTok AI has the capacity to train users using similar methods that dog trainers use, ie deploying positive and negative feedback loops to encourage TikTok users to behave in certain ways.
The trope of the influencer always starts the same, "I wasn't even trying to be famous, I was just being myself." But in 2021, or 2020, or July of 2019, (when Addison joined TikTok,) the "self" and the algorithm were already inseparable. In other words, Addison's first video was a commercial for herself — replicating things she'd seen elsewhere on the web — even if she calls it "self-expression."
In an interview with Fast Company, the CMO of Progressive described Flo as both "a character with real character" and "completely unplanned." But did he mean Flo or Stephanie Courtney?
With every passing month, it becomes less and less clear where the self ends and the algorithm begins. So is Addison a character with real character? Or a character with a reel?
Watch
CONTENT WARNING! This video is 👻haunted👻
Cheers
In España, the aromatics of a cocktail are equally as — if not more — important than the flavor profiles. A classic Gin Tónica is always good, but getting creative with the aromatics can really liven up your glass.
Mix, in a balloon glass filled with ice:
2 drops floral bitters
2 drops orange bitters
0.5 oz. fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice
0.5 oz. Saint Germaine
1.5 oz. Gin
Top off with tonic water, garnish with half a grapefruit wheel, juniper seeds, and cardamom pods.
Not going to lie, we had to look up when Jimmy Fallon was on…