Key Points
A few years ago I wrote about how, when planning my wedding, Id signaled to the Pinterest app that I was interested in hairstyles and tablescapes, and I was suddenly flooded with suggestions for more of the same..
All of social media wanted to recommend stuff that was no longer relevant, and the stench of this stale buffet of content lingered long after the non-event had ended...
But its important to noteso Im not just singling out Pinterest, which over the past two years has instituted new leadership and put more resources into fine-tuning the product so people actually want to shop on itthat this happens on other platforms, too...
Just now, opening the mobile app, Im seeing posts about perimenopause; women in their forties struggling to shrink their midsections, regulate their nervous systems, or medicate for late-onset ADHD; husbands hiring escorts; and Ali Wongs latest standup bit about divorce..
Back in 1999 the author-programmer Ellen Ullman wrote an essay for WIRED titled The Myth of Order, about the FUD surrounding Y2K, but mostly about how the (ultimately non-disastrous) event revealed some software systems to be little more than new wrappers applied to old jalopies..
