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There is this bar my friend brought me to. The owner is a expert curator, and this bar is his canvas. His record selection is impeccable. The sound is perfect. Everything on the menu is there for a reason. If you go there on a slow night, he will tell you all about it. It’s a delightful experience. Each song is selected for the moment, to gently nudge the vibe. I have seen a song so expertly chosen that it silenced the entire room.

There is also this place where I buy my coffee. This one’s a chain, but at this one branch, there is this one employee who really knows her coffee. Every time I go there, I learn something new about coffee, and walk out with something that either matches or redefines my taste.

I love these places because they are the last bastions of human curation in the age of algorithmic recommendations.

Algorithmic curation

We were promised an infinite catalogue with infinite personalised recommendations. Instead we got shoved in one of a dozen taste profiles and served the same crap as everyone else.

Spotify has a hundred million songs. It has a decade of my listening history, thousands of my liked songs. Yet my Discover Weekly is the same crap every week. My “for you” playlists the same songs I hear in every coffee shop from Berlin to Tokyo.

YouTube has even more data about me. It’s built by a company whose mission is “organizing the world’s information”. The algorithm reliably forgets that I love watercolour videos, but forever remembers that I watched a Simpsons clip 13 years ago. We upload 360 hours of video every minute, but I can guess which channels my friends know based on their taste.

Now there’s AI. We fed it humanity’s entire creative output, and its suggestions are so bland that we compare it to the stuff we feed pigs.

Derek Thompson was right: everything is television. Now an algorithm picks the channel.

Human curation

Anyway.

I want more human curation in my life. I want playlists put together by humans. I want travel tips from friends. I want product recommendations from experts who actually touched the products.

I try to put down my phone, eschew Shazam and ask people what song they’re playing. By the second or third song I’ll try to steal their playlist.

I make friends the old-fashioned way, by reaching out.

I write down every recommendation I get, and the name of the people making it. I give every thing I’m recommended a serious listen, and I will message you back with my gratitude and sometimes a request for more.

The more I do it, the more I realise how the finer experiences in life are participatory. Showing interest and talking to people gets you into circles you did not know existed. The coolest events are rarely announced loudly. House parties are not on meetup.com.

Be the change you want to see in the world

The best experiences are participatory. Communities must be maintained, and occasionally created.

I started “curating in public”. My playlists and my saved places are public. I share my favourite recipes, articles I enjoyed and quotes I think about a lot. My monthly newsletter features paintings I love.

When I find something I thing you would like, I will send it to you.

Are these tasteful? I don’t care. These are the things I like. Shuffle through them like you would the middle section at Lidl.