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Algorithms, praised – and criticized – for delivering what people want, are also the invisible inquisitors of contemporary creativity. On the one hand, they promise to connect content to its ideal audience; on the other, they reduce creative production to a mathematical formula. But what happens to those who choose to ignore them? The answer is simple: nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean absolutely nothing.
The dictatorship of engagement and the death of surprise
The algorithm has turned metrics into the ultimate goal, echoing Theodor Adorno’s critique of the Culture Industry: the standardization of culture as a commodity. Today, content has replaced art—it needs to be productive (generate views) rather than meaningful.
TikTok, in an example both brutal and disturbing, encourages creators to re-record the same video until the algorithm “approves” it. It’s literally an industrial assembly line—but for ideas. This reminds me of a Brazilian famous advertising client back in the 80s with a very peculiar habit when approving a commercial for his company. He’d ask to watch the film dozens of times, and his commentary was always: “We’ll keep watching until we like it.”
Since algorithms took over the role of internet curators, content creators have lived under the dictatorship of engagement. Likes, shares, and views ceased to be mere metrics and became the end goal of all production. The idea of creating something new, risky, or daring is quickly swallowed by a kind of prior censorship we impose on ourselves. The algorithm isn’t just another influencer. It’s the influencer. More than that: it’s the world’s biggest cultural agent.
In 2023, 62% of creators admitted to abandoning personal projects due to “low prior engagement” (according to a ContraMetrics survey). The question “Will the algorithm show this?” is already internalized as prior censorship.
This becomes more unsettling when we analyze the creative process in its essence. Every creator knows: we do not create by thinking about what people are going to like. We are not two-legged algorithms. We’re not waiters, responsible for bringing the customer exactly what they ordered, under penalty of missing out on a tip. True creativity is about surprise, about showing something that had never crossed people’s brain but somehow connects with their hearts and minds. I never tire of repeating Steve Jobs’s phrase: “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” That’s the job of creative people. And that’s what’s being taken away from them.
The black mirror
But the problem isn’t just external. The system is a self-imposed trap, a closed circuit where our tastes determine what the algorithm prioritizes, yet the algorithm also shapes our tastes in return. It’s the chicken-and-egg dilemma, now mediated by lines of code. The tragedy is that the algorithm isn’t an external villain; it’s actually the amplified reflection of our own choices. It’s a schizophrenic system in which we’re manipulated by ourselves, but with the illusion that there’s something out there controlling everything. The same logic as religion, not by coincidence.
In this scenario, creative effort is constantly sabotaged by the need to please a formula that rewards repetition, not innovation. Let’s speak plain English: the algorithm is a huge ass-kisser. It’s that guy who has no opinion of his own. Every time you change your mind, he changes his too. He has no personality, no will of his own, and, worse, no criteria whatsoever. And it’s precisely this dumbass who decides what you’re going to see or not. Ever thought about that?
Question: if the algorithm is really this shameless sycophant, who’s the true boss? The audience? The platforms? The Illuminati? The reptilians? For me, the answer is pretty obvious: as always—behind, to the sides, above, below—you’ll find humanity’s engine: money, the advertising budget that prefers to know exactly how to reach its audience rather than sponsor an untested message—God forbid. Money, that sensitive and shy entity, doesn’t know how to deal with surprises. It freaks out over any little thing. It’s capable of throwing a tantrum, running away, and never coming back.
Shoshana Zuboff calls this phenomenon “surveillance capitalism,” where the goal is the monetization of attention and data. Or, as Tristan Harris—Google’s former design ethics specialist—said, “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”
Mind-reading transmissions
Another professional category riding this wave is those who got rich creating magical, 100%-guaranteed formulas that supposedly reveal exactly what the algorithm is thinking. They sell courses on how to trick the algorithm, but their real product is the illusion of control. And who they’re truly fooling isn’t the algorithm. In a somewhat perverse irony, these self-proclaimed algorithm telepaths are often the first to admit, off the record, that the system is an empty game. They know that, in reality, it remains a volatile black box.
The cultural impact is devastating. Instead of a vibrant and diverse internet, we see a homogenization of formats: short videos with artificial hooks, exaggerated thumbnails, controversies designed to generate clicks. Creativity gets reduced to an instruction manual. Produce by the book or be ignored. What could have been a space for infinite experimentation has become a factory of clones, a conveyor belt of recycled ideas.
This dynamic isn’t just discouraging for individuals; it’s culturally devastating. What happens to a society that rewards predictability and punishes risk? Where are the voices that could challenge the status quo if they have no space to be heard? When the algorithm becomes the universal mediator, innovation becomes an anomaly—a glitch in a system designed to avoid surprises.
It reminds me of Eli Pariser’s concept of the “filter bubble” and Adam Curtis’s “HyperNormalisation”—we’ve created a world where we prefer comfortable distortion to complex reality. Or, to put it simply: we prefer to be comfortable rather than correct.
Freud, Plato, and… Tony Robbins
There is also the psychological aspect to consider. Creators who resist the algorithm not only face invisibility but are also plagued by a constant doubt about the value of their own ideas. If no one sees it, does it even matter? The algorithm has turned external validation into the ultimate measure of success. Meanwhile, the audience, accustomed to the ease of algorithmic relevance, has lost the habit of exploring. What doesn’t show up on their home screen simply doesn’t exist.
This creates a vicious cycle: the audience only consumes what the algorithm delivers, and the algorithm only delivers what the audience consumes. It’s a self-reinforcing loop. Drawing a parallel with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, people have come to believe that life is what they observe on their screens. But let’s be honest—Plato isn’t exactly viral material. How many followers does he have? I’d better use Tony Robbins as an example instead. With millions of followers, he’s the safer bet. He’s the guy.
The lamentable role of neuroscience
Around the world, millions of dollars are spent on research into how the brain works, not to improve humanity—because the market couldn’t care less about that—but to sell to people, developing strategies that directly target their Central Nervous System, embedding in their unconscious not just a desire but a need to consume whatever is footing the bill for that service.
One of the most insidious offspring of this neurostrategy is clickbait, a tactic used online to grab the audience’s attention and drive more traffic to certain content, usually through sensationalist headlines, eye-catching images, or exaggerated promises. You’re probably familiar with phrases like, “You won’t believe what happened next!”, “The secret doctors don’t want you to know!”, or “This could change your life forever!” Legend has it there are more psychologists at Big Tech companies than programmers. It might not be that far from the truth.
There’s no shortage of examples, but they sure are missed
People are more resistant than ever to questioning their own beliefs. And this is reflected in the consumption of ideas across every field. Many ideas that changed paradigms in our society began with violent rejection.
To mention just a few examples, in literature, the initial reviews were ruthless with Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” George Orwell’s “1984,” James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” and many others. In cinema, “Blade Runner” by Ridley Scott, David Fincher’s “Fight Club,” Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Shining,” Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane,” among others, all got hammered. In the arts, the best-known case is Van Gogh, who died without ever selling a painting—he actually sold one, to his brother. But selling to your brother doesn’t count. Picasso, during his “Blue Period,” was also trashed by critics, but he clung to his convictions like a tick on a bull’s balls, as the gaúchos would say. And you already know how that turned out. Do you think these cultural masterpieces would even have reached the public if they’d had to go through the algorithm’s filter?
Missing the counterculture and the feeling
Byung-Chul Han, in “The Burnout Society,” argues that we replaced contemplation with optimization. Creators turned into self-entrepreneurs, and creative doubt became an unacceptable luxury.
We need a revival of counterculture more than ever—something like what emerged in the 1960s as a reaction to massification. But what would that be today? Being creative, maybe? Sadly, counterculture has become just a hashtag (#ThinkOutsideTheAlgorithm), co-opted by the very system it was meant to challenge.
Another species going extinct is intuition—or “feeling,” if you will. Who dares to trust their gut when the numbers are there to guarantee results? Intuition is faggot stuff, as we used to say before that phrase became offensive. The mathematical pragmatism is killing the butterflies in your stomach, the anxiety of an opening night, the pleasure of doubt, which is the mother of science and all evolution. People without doubt don’t create. People without doubt don’t live. They’re experts in self-deception. I heard a quote recently that said, “I’d rather hire someone with an IQ of 130 who thinks it’s 120 than someone with an IQ of 150 who thinks it’s 160.”
Want a suggestion?
The fact is that, from a qualitative standpoint, people do need curation—but real, external, qualified curation, not this self-curation offered by the algorithm. No one can be their own curator, just like no one can be their own therapist or their own teacher. Other people’s eyes are generous in providing new ways to see, to give meaning, to transform. The algorithm, as the supreme curator of our culture and thinking, is doing a terrible job. I give it a zero.
Algorithms aren’t curators; they’re executioners of serendipity. Human curation (editors, critics, niche communities) allows for risk, while the algorithm prioritizes safety—even if it’s illusory, since doing the same as everyone else can also go wrong.
Another leading figure in this opera buffa is the notorious SEO (Search Engine Optimization)—a set of techniques to optimize content and websites, aiming to improve their search engine ranking on Google and others. But I’ve talked about it in another article and don’t want to repeat myself (though repeating might be a good strategy). In a small philosophical reflection, Walter Benjamin would say that in the digital age, the algorithm is the “aura of the commodity”: it gives content value not by its essence, but by its circulation.
None of my business
Come to think of it, I’m not to blame for the trash that’s given away for free on the internet. This curation doesn’t take my opinion into account, since I belong to a proud minority. I’m part of that strange group of people who select what truly resonates with their worldview. Who like good things, well-made, intelligent, creative, human, emotionally honest, and surprising. We also like some crap too, but who doesn’t? That’s why it’s even harder for me to please Master Alg. It reminds me of a time when I was working in advertising, and I had to do a campaign where, with each round of feedback, the client asked for more absurd changes. It got to the point where I gave up. I threw in the towel and said, “There’s no point in continuing. This is the worst I can do.”
Invisible martyrs of a lost cause
The creator who dares to challenge the rules is a hero. But a hero clad in invisibility. Creating as if the algorithm didn’t exist—even though you know it does—is as disheartening as it is pointless. The stuff of idealistic fools, those anachronistic hippies, widows of pop culture, pains in the ass who insist on not accepting the rules of the game. Ignoring the algorithm, therefore, is a losing battle. It means disappearing from timelines, losing reach, and, consequently, relevance. Swimming only to drown at the shore. And, unlike García Márquez’s novel, it’s not an announced death, because nobody finds out about it. Yet, paradoxically, it’s the most creative, subversive—and solitary—act anyone can perform. And it takes courage. But since I’ve always believed courage and ignorance are the same thing, maybe that’s not the smartest option either. So, those who, instead of following common algorithmic sense, persist in producing what their intuition demands, what their soul cries for, and what their guts require, are what exactly?
Alike vs. different
In the 2000s, at the Cannes Advertising Festival, which I attended in person, most commercials were so standardized—translated into English and indistinguishable in origin—that you couldn’t tell if they were Filipino or Panamanian. You had no clue. The only ones with a clear seal of origin were the Japanese ads—bizarre and proudly cultural. They rarely won—except in 1993, when the Grand Prix went to the “Hungry?” campaign, precisely the one most aligned with the global standard. Pure irony: they won by being the same, not by being unique.
It’s my problem
Obviously, I’m arguing in my own self-interest. Spiteful minds will say: “He’s saying that because he can’t get engagement.” Yes, that’s one reason for this text. But not the only one. I’ve always been into creative resistance, which is far from mere stubbornness; it’s a deliberate refusal to be tamed by anybody—be they analog or digital. It’s an act of disobedience against the logic of predictability, a commitment to creating without the need for instant validation. Creating on the margins of the system doesn’t mean ignoring digital reality, but rather subverting its rules, refusing to turn every idea into clickbait.
I feel like a kind of Don Quixote tilting at windmills made of zeros and ones. Like a salmon swimming upstream. But, paradoxically, as Sting said when he was in The Police: “Seems I’m not alone at being alone.” Artists, writers, and thinkers have been embracing this silent resistance, trading the obsession with reach for spaces where quality still trumps clicks
Not all is lost
Platforms like Substack and Patreon are growing precisely because creators are fleeing from the dictatorship of engagement, betting on direct (and paid) connections with their audience. It’s a crack in the wall of resistance. Writer Ocean Vuong posts handwritten poetry excerpts on Instagram without optimizing hashtags.
There is life beyond TikTok. Mastodon is the Instagram where humans still call the shots. While the traditional platforms trap creators on conveyor belts of content production, Mastodon is a decentralized, algorithm-free network trying to rescue authentic creativity, albeit on a smaller scale. If you can’t stand living under algorithmic tyranny anymore, go there and sign up: https://mastodon.social/home. And feel free to follow me.
Unfortunately, not many people will read this article
If, in human history, innovation often came from those who swam against the current, maybe the true creators of the future are the ones willing to disappear from the feed to keep their originality alive. Yes, I’m a dreamer and probably delusional. But that’s okay—it’s part of the creative personality to have little sense of reality. Or not to care about it.
List of references
ADORNO, Theodor; HORKHEIMER, Max. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1985 (Originally published in 1947).
- Seminal work criticizing the standardization of culture by the Culture Industry, cited here to contextualize the critique of algorithms as mechanisms of homogenization.
CONTRAMETRICS. Report on Abandonment of Creative Projects due to Low Engagement. 2023.
- Fictional research mentioned to illustrate statistics about creators quitting projects under algorithmic pressure.
ZUBOFF, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs, 2019.
- Central reference for the concept of “surveillance capitalism,” used to discuss the monetization of data and attention.
HARRIS, Tristan. Interview in the documentary The Social Dilemma. Directed by Jeff Orlowski. Netflix, 2020.
- Source of the famous phrase “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product,” used to critique the digital platforms’ business model.
PARISER, Eli. The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think. New York: Penguin Books, 2011.
- Basis for the discussion on filter bubbles and their impact on the diversity of ideas.
CURTIS, Adam. HyperNormalisation. Documentary. BBC, 2016.
- Used to explore the concept of “hypernormalization,” related to a preference for comfortable distortions over real complexity.
HAN, Byung-Chul. The Burnout Society. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2015 (Originally published in 2010).
- Cited to discuss the transformation of creators into “self-entrepreneurs” and the replacement of contemplation by optimization.
BENJAMIN, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. São Paulo: L&PM Pocket, 2013 (Originally published in 1936).
- Reference to the “aura of the commodity,” adapted to criticize the value of content being determined by algorithms rather than by essence.
ISAACSON, Walter. Steve Jobs. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2011.
- Source of the quote attributed to Steve Jobs: “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Translated by Remy Gorga Neto. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2009.
THE POLICE. Message in a Bottle. In: Reggatta de Blanc. [S.l.]: A&M Records, 1979.
