Netizen: 16: Tariff

The Technologies Behind Agentic AI
Agentic AI: Set To Explode In 2026
The Convergence Age: Ten Forces Reshaping Humanity’s Future
Liquid Computing: The Future of Human-Tech Symbiosis
Velocity Money: Crypto, Karma, and the End of Traditional Economics
The Next Decade of Biotech: Convergence, Innovation, and Transformation
Beyond Motion: How Robots Will Redefine The Art Of Movement
ChatGPT For Business: A Workbook
Becoming an AI-First Organization
Quantum Computing: Applications And Implications
Challenges In AI Safety
AI-Era Social Network: Reimagined for Truth, Trust & Transformation AI And Robotics Break Capitalism
Musk’s Management
Corporate Culture/ Operating System: Greatness
CEO Functions

This is an epic piece of writing by @om https://t.co/i6EZNONftH
— Hiten Shah (@hnshah) January 16, 2026

Our Algorithmic Grey-Beige World “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” — Oscar Wilde, Novelist .............. 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. ........... 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. ......... The sad part is that Instagram and TikTok’s ability to unleash conformity at global scale impacts the offline world as well. ........... 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. ............. 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. .............. 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. .............. 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. .................. What May called courage banishes you to a world of lower distribution, fewer views, less income.

This explains why my podcast has not taken off https://t.co/sd7jeCnlx2
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) January 17, 2026

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Friday, January 16, 2026

16: Tariff

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, 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.

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