You Are Being Shown What Someone Wants You To See
You don’t browse freely. You don’t discover by accident. Whether it’s the homepage of your streaming service or the front page of your favorite newspaper, someone made the choices. Someone decided what you would see. And what you wouldn’t.
We like to imagine that culture “emerges.” That trends reflect taste. That feeds reflect preference. But every menu, gallery, headline, and shuffle is curated. And every act of curation is an act of judgment.
This interlude — following The View from Nowhere — pulls back the velvet curtain on curation itself: from digital algorithms to physical spaces, from the quiet influence of visual design to the moral engineering of autoplay.
The playlist isn’t a mirror. It’s a sermon.
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