At the time, he noted that the aesthetics of physical spaces, like coffee shops and co-working offices, were being heavily influenced by Airbnb and Instagram, flattening global interior design into one singular and recognizable vibe.
Seven years later, Kyle’s argument is that AirSpace has turned into what he now calls Filterworld, a phrase he uses to describe how algorithmic recommendations have become one of the most dominating forces in culture, and as a result, have pushed society to converge on a kind of soulless sameness in its tastes.
You’ll hear us trace the origins of Filterworld back to the rise of modern social media in the 2010s and how this development has been accelerated by the deterioration of the open web, an erosion of trust in our institutions, and the frankly frightening speed and scale of platforms like TikTok.
What I find is that, in Filterworld, in this world of digital platforms and algorithmic feeds, one quirk goes viral instantly — a new adaptation, a new aesthetic flourish, can go from one person doing it to 100,000 people doing it in a day, whether it’s a TikTok sound or a dance or whatever, and so I think there are these artistic innovations that happen.
When we use the same platform for five or six years, we tend to start getting itchy and wanting something else, and I think it’s also been this gradual evolution of the internet from text to more professionalized images, to audio and video, to TikTok, which is this kind of full-featured television, essentially.
Digital platforms have absorbed different areas of culture that used to be more offline, whether it’s a television equivalent like TikTok or podcasts that used to be radio, over the past decade, more things have gotten more online, and I think that’s been a major shift.
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