Journal — Martin Ruffe

Filterworld
February 15 2025 Literature

The book Filterworld describes our obsession with tailored but homogenized online content that has been fed to us by big tech algorithms and I'm reaching a point in the book that hopefully suggests improvements to the situation...

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One suggestion to give up social media. How hard would that be? Maybe not that difficult. Most platforms are a shadow of what they were 10 years ago when they were useful and fun. Facebook is largely dead for many people. Instagram has morphed so much it isn't of interest to its original audience of photographers whose content isn't presented as it used to be. Twitter/X only has a handful of people who still post interesting stuff. TikTok and Snapchat didn't appeal to my generation, or at least my circle of friends. Only YouTube still engages as it used to, and it is arguable that it is a social network, only in its comments feature. It feels closer to traditional broadcast. So maybe not so difficult at all. And in place of scrolling, read more books? A much more satisfactory use of time?

Another solution to consume content curated by individuals rather than algorithms.

Marvel
February 15 2025 Film

I thought with some time away from the Marvel universe, I might have some enthusiasm for the new Captain America film. Unfortunately it disappointed, but good to be back at the cinema, and with a reasonable size audience.