Our Algorithmic Grey-Beige World

I start my morning going through nearly 250 feeds that flow into my “reader” app. Today, two quotes stood out in my early morning reading.

“The main purpose of my work is to provoke people into using their imagination. Most people spend their lives housed in dreary, grey-beige conformity, mortally afraid of using colours.” — Verner Panton, Designer.

“Writing is hard. And I’ll also say, writers are born, not made. The more you teach someone how to write the more you risk squeezing the creativity out of them. We don’t need me-too, we need unique.” — Bob Lefsetz, Writer

Both were saying the same thing, albeit about two different aspects of culture and society. And they were only echoing Oscar Wilde’s erudite observation from 1891.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” — Oscar Wilde, Novelist

Wilde is one of my favorite writers because he was so eviscerating and devastating in his observations, no matter the cost. He said that just before the Victorian society destroyed him for refusing to conform to its sexual norms. Individuality and the ability to stand outside has always come at a price. That is why people don’t want to stand out. They conform.

Psychologist Rollo May, observing 1950s America: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.” May diagnosed this when McCarthyism was literally hunting down anyone who thought differently.

Four quotes, separated by over a century, say the same thing. And yet, what Panton, Wilde, and May couldn’t anticipate was how technology would industrialize conformity. Wilde saw people living as mimicry in 1891. May diagnosed conformity in the 1950s. Both described social pressure.

What used to require shame and ostracism is now baked into the internet’s economic infrastructure. The algorithmic reality of technology platforms has codified conformity into the human condition. And it is very profitable—the real late-stage capitalism. Things are going to get worse with the new AI, that leans into the “mid” as a default, built entirely on the notion of conformity.

Today, open YouTube and every single thumbnail looks the same. Shocked faces, specific color contrasts, carefully positioned text overlays. Same voice. Same cadence and energy level. And videos have roughly the same lengths. The algorithm rewards these patterns with distribution and punishes deviation with obscurity.

Creators choose grey-beige conformity because it works, and the algorithm rewards sameness. My carefully curated list of creators has devolved into sameness. Whether pen reviewers, photographers, music bloggers, history tellers, or science bloggers—it is clear they are praying at the feet of the gods of algorithms.

Spotify has done the same with subtle algorithmic music. Don’t tell me you don’t hear that “Spotify sound” in music production. Songs engineered to be short, to provide an instant dopamine hit. The first 30 seconds have to hook listeners before they skip. After that, who cares? After all, Spotify pays the same for 30 seconds or three minutes. Everything is now made to belong on a Spotify playlist.

Spotify, let’s face it, is still in kindergarten compared to Instagram and TikTok. Those two have scaled, metastasized, and gamified conformity to a whole new level. The grey-beige aesthetic is what gets distribution. Color, weirdness, genuine imagination get algorithmically ignored. Match whatever narrow aesthetic the platform currently amplifies, or else move on to the backwaters. Those who think they’re being creative because they’re “creating content” are just living at the whims and fancies of the algorithm, painting by numbers in templates already defined.

As Wilde said, their creative output is just a reflection of the algorithm, their “content” a mimicry, their creativity just a joke. The sad part is that Instagram and TikTok’s ability to unleash conformity at global scale impacts the offline world as well.

It was a trend first noted in 2016 by (now) New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka in his piece for The Verge, “AirSpace.” To jog your memory: AirSpace is a phenomenon where Airbnbs, coffee shops, and co-working spaces across the world look identical. Reclaimed wood, industrial lighting, minimalist furniture, the same Edison bulbs hanging over the same avocado toast. Every coffee shop became Sightglass circa 2008. The goal isn’t uniqueness. It’s matching what performs well in photos and gets bookings.

It is ironic. The whole point of Airbnb was that each location was supposed to be quirky and unique. If I wanted sameness, I would prefer the bland efficiency of a J.W. Marriott or a Hyatt. At least I don’t have to make my own bed and get freshly laundered shirts by end of day.

Silicon Valley amplified this blandness. It is the people. It is rare to find people who are interesting, unique, and have strong enough opinions to have convictions, especially public ones. This lack of imagination is reflected in the dress code of the Valley.

Steve Jobs inspired many to wear black turtlenecks. Mark Zuckerberg jumpstarted the uniform of grey hoodies. And who can forget the half-a-decade-long orgy of mediocrity and lack of taste: Allbirds, those wool sneakers that became the unofficial shoe of tech, as if an entire industry collectively forgot how to dress themselves. The mimicry wasn’t about fashion. It was actually a simple signal: I belong to the winning template. It was farthest from it. In my essay, Sometimes a Shoe is not a Shoe, I wrote:

Right through the mid-nineties, non-conformists dominated the technology industry. The first uniform for the valley was: no uniform. It was a place where misfits fit together. The emergence of the internet was the start of conformity. …. As the technology industry became the cultural zeitgeist, it became necessary to advertise to the world that you were part of the tech set. And the easiest way to do so was through a uniform.

The Silicon Valley doyens mimicked Jobs’ turtleneck the way courtiers copied Louis XIV’s walk. Same impulse, faster cycle. What took Versailles years now takes months, thanks to Instagram.

The algorithm spots the trend. Temu gets to work. The factory produces it, the platform (Instagram and TikTok) distributes it, all before the original gets cold. The industry that built the algorithms couldn’t escape the algorithmic thinking. Even their own look has become content optimized for recognition. Zuck wears a big thick silver chain over his black T-shirt? Six months later, every founder worth their pre-seed dollars sports the look. Make that three months.

Back in 2007, I wondered about the commodification of social interaction. I mused about a future where human connection became a product to optimize. Nah, I didn’t expect this. We’re living in the endgame. Algorithmic reality doesn’t just commodify interaction. It standardizes imagination. The algorithms squeeze creativity out of millions by showing them exactly what “works.” We don’t get unique. We get infinite variations of the same.

And yet here we are. Our algorithmic gods are our teachers, tastemakers, and economic incentive all at once. Fall in line, and get paid. What May called courage banishes you to a world of lower distribution, fewer views, less income. It’s safer to wear the cloak of grey-beige conformity.

Even supposed refuges aren’t safe. Take fountain pens, a hobby I love and collect because they are an expression of a very unique art form. I am very deliberate in my likes. I wrote about this in my essay, “Designing a Life.” Just as my photos, my playlist, and my wardrobe are a reflection of my inner self—likes, loves, and desires—my approach to hobbies like fountain pens is the same.

Even in a hobby where hundreds of variations of pens are released every year and infinite inks are made available, I see people being so uncreative and becoming part of the “herd.” And you quickly realize that a lot has to do with the QVC-like charms of Instagram. It is so easy to be swayed by the sameness-disease.

I fight everyday, to not be swayed by the machines, and let my taste over ride the blandness I see around me. I have fallen victim a couple of times.