Recommendation: Ignore More Recommendations

There’s too much damn content

There’s too much damn content.

If the content were bad, there would be an obvious fix to this problem: We could just try to avoid it all completely.

But that’s not the problem—at least as I see it. The problem is that too much of the content is good. We live in a golden age of television, podcasts, and TikToks—an embarrassment of riches. The median reader¹, moving at a pace of 4 books/year, would need a decade just to get through the NYT Fiction Best Sellers list from the most recent year.

How, then, do we go about deciding what to consume?

Of course one strategy is to go for stuff we have high confidence will be good—either because we already know we like the creator, or because an algorithm/influencer/rotten tomatoes told us it would be. This works well enough, but even so, it remains impossible to get through everything.

There’s also an unpleasant side effect: The charts are increasing dominated by an ever-shrinking cadre of superstars, or sequels/remakes of things known to be popular. This is an issue Adam Mastroianni details brilliantly in his piece, “Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly”; here’s a few choice graphs:

FILM—

TELEVISION—

MUSIC—

BOOKS—

Aside from just being kind of depressing, I think this is bad because it suggests that as a society, we’re selecting more and more for art that meets a certain threshold for quality but is falls within a narrower band of approval. Or (to come at it from the other side) we’re less willing to take a risk on potentially beautiful or groundbreaking content that has not been as thoroughly '“vetted.”

What’s the alternative?

Ignore More Recommendations

I’m writing this post in the mode of prescription—but, arguably, it’s more of a description: You’re already ignoring a lot of content simply because there is more content than any human could ever possibly consume.

My goal, then, is to advocate for better norms that reflect this reality, and maybe change the way you think about which particular recommendations to ignore. Specifically, I propose the following:

1. No-strings-attached recs—

If there’s one thing I want to push back on in this post, it’s the idea that someone is obligated to watch/read anything you recommend.

Better, I think, to simply share what you liked or found interesting about a particular piece of content and let the other person decide on their own terms whether it’s worthy of their time. (Better, too, to err on the side of making too few recommendations than too many, since we’re all inundated!)

2. Let curiosity drive selection—

Of course one way to let curiosity drive selection is good old-fashioned browsing (e.g., in a bookstore or the pages of a print publication), but the reality is that most of us are finding content on the internet; necessarily, this involves more algorithmically generated content. Again, a lot of that content is good—but there are market forces that make it more conventional on the whole, so it’s worth it to dig for that weirder, high-risk/high-reward content.

What does “digging” look like? I’d argue that it means going down rabbit holes—the more organic the better: Go on Wikipedia or Reddit. Click the random link (Spotify version) in that article you’re reading. Look up an obscure influence a musician mentions in an interview.

Naturally, this will turn up some complete garbage—but it will also turn up some totally unexpected gems! Once you find one strange and awesome corner of the internet, it tends to point you toward a lot of others, especially if the people pointing you are actual humans. And much of the joy of encountering great content, I think, isn’t just the content itself; it’s the serendipity of discovery.

3. Triangulate—

One indicator that I think bodes really well for a piece of art is when you start hearing praise for it from multiple different sources.

If your hairdresser tells you you have to check out a new TV show, that’s on the whole fairly weak evidence in its favor. If your hairdresser and your sibling and your friend from middle school and a pop culture roundup tell you to check it out, that suggests that it appeals to a genuinely diverse group of people.

4. Identify trusted recommenders—

Personally, for the reason above, it’s rare that I commit to something on the basis of a single recommendation—but there are notable exceptions: We all (I hope) have people in our lives who know us so well, or whose sensibilities are so similar to our own, that their recommendations offer close to a guarantee of enjoyment. For this reason, it’s worth making a mental note of where a particularly good recommendation came from (especially if it’s obscure), so that you can go back to that source for more. (This could be someone you know personally, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.)

For anyone who is not in the “trusted recommender” category, it doesn’t mean their suggestions don’t serve a purpose. It just means that (for me) there needs to be some other driver—either high curiosity, or it’s the second or third time sI’ve heard it mentioned—for me to check it out.

There’s also the reality that sometimes it’s just nice to have something to discuss and assess, even if you’re not in love with whatever that something is. One thing I definitely recommend: making time to connect with the people you care about :).

TL;DR

Because there is too much good content for any one human to possibly consume, I advocate for ignoring more recommendations, and not feeling bad about it.

Instead, I propose:

1. No-strings-attached recs

2. Letting curiosity drive selection

3. Triangulating recommendations from diverse sources

4. Identifying trusted recommenders

1. To be fair: The mean, skewed by those who read a lot, is 12 books/year. At that rate, it would take three years to get through the 2021 NYT Fiction Best Seller list.