AN ENEMIES-TO-LOVERS-LETTER TO THE ALGORITHM

Or, Anisa rambling about being chronically online

INCLUDED IN THIS PACKAGE:

• An Enemies-to-Lovers-Letter To the Algorithm

• Media Review

• Anisa’s Writing Corner

• Conclusion

Skip to any section you would like <3

An Enemies-to-Lovers-Letter To the Algorithm

recognize this? 🪖

If I, sporadically and rather unnecessarily, began singing the above line from Kate Bush’s “Army Dreamers,” would you be able to complete the sentiment with the following line? (but he didn’t have the money for a guitar?)

Have you recently been inundated with an incessant flux of videos using Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey by Paul and Linda McCartney?

If so, I will assume one of two things:

1. You enjoy Kate Bush’s/Paul’s discographies (and who wouldn’t?)

2. TikTok has refused to let you hear anything else for about a month.

I am in both camps, but am in the second somewhat against my will. (You will still catch me, however, humming along).

In what will likely go down in history as the most breakneck segue to exist in a newsletter, I have always hated social media algorithms.

I’m not sure why. Less in the sense that I can’t think of a reason, and more in the sense that there are a lot of valid reasons and picking only one seems taxing. They’ve never shown my content a lot of love, they tend to dictate what I’m looking at and therefore thinking about for weeks on end, they feel arbitrary and yet by their very nature cannot be, and so on.

I have spent a lot of time on BookTok, and now know better than to say this, but in my earliest days, this also resulted in complaining about how “the algorithm”—arbiter-Fae, most elusive of creatures—chooses to promote the same five books over and over.¹

My views have changed a little since then. The chief grievance I have with all algorithms now is one I mentioned before—the constant control of what we see, think, and discuss. Gate-keeping, to use the term we were taught in my communications class. It’s all fun and games until it starts to manipulate your individual perception.

I remember scrolling on TikTok one evening and encountering a video somewhere along the lines of (and in reference to Kate’s Army Dreamers) “when you thought this song was trending but it isn’t” and feeling absolutely blown out of the water. This was a song I’d been seeing everywhere. On Instagram, accompanying devastating animatics; on TikTok, coupled with real-world events. I could scroll maybe twice and escape it for a minute, but it would be back by video number three. 

I thought this meant I knew what other people were seeing, talking about. It turned out that I had no idea at all.

The current definition of “trending” according to Oxford Lang

In retrospect, this was all a kind of foolishness. I know, on some vague, indeterminable level how a social media algorithm works. You see something, you linger on it, it brings you something else. You engage, and it goes “aha. Give them more of the same.” It judges you by what you skip and stay to watch, and so your content starts to be grouped by what you favor (or, if you’re the type, what you hate enough to rant-comment under.) 

I know this. I suspect we all do. And yet, it is so easy to forget that our “for you pages” are largely individual. One friend may have been similarly plagued by Kate Bush and Paul McCartney. Another may not have seen either on their feed. All will encounter videos with thousands or millions of views, comments, likes. Can we still, in good conscience, define the word trending as “currently popular or widely discussed online?”²

I don’t know about you, but I can’t. I’ve become increasingly troubled by the implications of the echo chamber. It is rare that I go on Instagram and see a video that a friend hasn’t liked, rarer still to find a “viral” video that is important in more than a handful of circles. I’m old enough to remember Vine wasn’t quite the same. Years later, we still quote the same ones. 

Now, what my mom sees on Instagram and Facebook differs from what my brother sees on YouTube shorts differs from what I see on Instagram and TikTok and Tumblr.³ Seeing something everywhere no longer means everyone is talking about it. It only means the algorithm wants you to think so.⁴

Inevitably, at this point, someone with better knowledge of media history will tell me that gate-keeping has always been this way, even in the news. And, from what I gather, that’s true. Agenda-setting has always been the media industry’s way of dictating what we even get to discuss. The difference, I think, is that modern day algorithms split hegemony into several parts. The death of cable and the lost art of watching something that everyone else in the country will be watching simultaneously have jointly heralded the birth of something else. Namely, each of us is narrow-cast content we will like, content our friends have vetted, content within a circle that is very firmly closed. What then happens in cases of political “debate,” when every video you see confirms your own bias? When nothing contrary breaks through? When everything you see was aimed at your specific view, and takes the space of a million things besides?

To return to the BookTok example: this most likely explains why newer users will often complain of sameness, of ACOTAR this, and The Cruel Prince⁵ that, of the regrettable absence of diversity. It is also why veterans will look at this statement incredulously and say “huh?” It is also why I saw a TikToker recommending “books you rarely see on BookTok” which featured titles I (and others in the comments) very often see on BookTok, or our specific sides of it.⁶ The shallowness of the algorithm is its depth. 

PAUSE. At this point, one may be feeling miserably failed by the promise of the title. Here is all the hate; where is the love?

From “The Cruel Prince” by Holly Black. I doubt Cardan was talking about the algorithm, but I am.

Well. Here begins the letter.

Dear Algorithm(s),

It has been said that I detest you. I do. There is little I despise more than the way you induce an echo chamber, than the way you push content from people who fit your standards and suppress content from people who don’t. 

All of the above being said, I adore you for the way you have connected me to people and things I’ve come to love. For plaguing me with Kate Bush and Paul McCartney because you know by a kind of magic that I love them. For introducing me to a community of writers and readers who read and write the best books.

For introducing me to Leigh Bardugo and R.F. Kuang and V.E. Schwab. For getting me into the Beatles. For somehow figuring out what I want to see when and for making me laugh till my ribs ache like teeth after (too) many sweets. For finding me the fellas that knew how Joan of Arc felt and for not letting me forget Laura Gilpin’s two-headed calf. For keeping my company while I attempt to query. You are “clever as the devil and twice as pretty.”⁷

I will hate you forever for being. I will love you for the act of it, too. And shortly after I finish writing this segment, I will come back to your arms.⁸

With the highest hate and the deepest love,

Anisa

(there you go.)

---

Media Review

BOOKS:

April was a good reading month. I read little, but well. Some favorites:

The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland, which is wildly unique and a recommendation for anyone who knows what a Lestat is. Such an original addition to vampiric pastiche, and an excellent aperitif for Dracula Daily Season.

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo, which is gorgeously crafted, and might be my favorite of Leigh’s releases. No one has been talking about it, which is criminal, so I’ve been forced to stalk Tumblr and TikTok for posts that just do not exist.

Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong, which I feel called to defend. I really did love it, and am so relieved that book two comes out so soon. One of my most atmospheric reads.

An honorable mention goes to If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga, which I read till the sun was up and my head was light and aching a from the effort. I love a good experimental structure, but I have many feelings, and will be thinking about the third act forever.⁹

MUSIC:

I spent April listening to everything I listened to in March, but with the last minute addition of Mashrou’ Leila’s Raksit Leila which is so lovely and I’m having a hard time explaining why. I also really enjoyed Texas Reznikoff by Mitski, which is just about on the other end of the pool, as well as Elephant Elephant by Evelyn Evelyn (try saying that five times fast).

ANISA’S WRITING CORNER

Mythic Things - Anisa Daniel-Oniko

April was a lot, writing wise. I sent Astericus to betas, finished Camp NaNo, and got through thirty thousand words of Project V. Allow me to end the list in a wildly unprofessionally manner and say APRIL SAW ME GET PUBLISHED! My short story “Mythic Things” is available here, courtesy of the Artist & Muse April issue of Lady Dakota Warren’s “Nowhere Girl Collective.” (Now excuse me while I read that again).¹⁰

Project V wise, I am less than 10k words from the end, which feels absolutely precarious. I will be sending it off to be read by people soon, and after that querying, and after that—well, who knows? Hope I have more great news to share next month! For now, I’m focusing on the finish line.

CONCLUSION

Project V, Chapter 35

April was a month that went by in a blur for me. Spring finals, beta readers, Camp NaNo, and reading desperately to escape the madness of it all. I’m glad it’s behind me, and I’m glad it was there, and I’m glad I get a bit of a break. Hoping for the best May all of us can have.

Much love,
Anisa

1. By now, of course, I recognize that this is close to the truth but still misses it. The algorithm shows you the same five books, and shows someone else a different set of five.

2. “Especially on social media?”

3. Tumblr, which is also algorithmic, is akin to X and therefore semi-unique in its “Trending Page” which shows us, based on tags, the top ten topics being discussed on the app on any given day. I love you, Tumblr. As a result, you are wonderful during Dracula Daily season, and also each year on November 5th.

4. This is perhaps the least of its vices. Shall we discuss TikTok’s filtering of videos based on the perceived attractiveness, wealth, or physical ability of the people who feature in them?

5. A disclaimer: I adore “The Folk of the Air” and do not mean to belittle the books by saying this.

6. Including, among others, Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” and Mona Awad’s “All’s Well.”

7. Yet another Holly Black quote, White Cat this time (although I’m certain those words have been arranged in that idiomatic order before).

8. I did. Apparently there’s drama in my city? Oops.

9. I’m…still not sure how much of it is truth. Which, I think is the point.

10. This story is likely one of my favorite things I’ve ever written and it would mean the world and half of the moon if you read it <3