The Algorithmic Flattening of Bookstagram and Why I’m Giving Up

Social media algorithms reward clarity and flatness, but most of us are a bundle of contradictions. The liberal housewife, the driven career woman who loves baking sourdough and spicy novels, the writer who loves romantasy and making people think. In real life, none of these pairings are extraordinary. I’ve identified with all of them at one stage of my life or another. But to an algorithm, these points of tension create confusion. Do we surface the tradwife, girl boss, or intellectual content to the user? If you’re creating multidimensional content, the algorithm doesn’t know which users to present your content to either. So we talk about personal brand, how to streamline messaging, and how to package ourselves into easily digestible pieces. 

For many women, especially high achieving women, this is not new. It’s how we survived spaces not created for us. In a world where the importance of digital identity is surpassing that of real life, thanks to the technocrats leading companies like Palantir, OpenAI, and Meta, the stakes have never been higher. Your politics, eating habits, and TBR are served to you based on the identity you only partially contributed to. If you do not limit yourself to a singular repetitive drumbeat in your online presence, you are silenced, your words and imagery drowning in the tidal wave of available content, never to surface again. 

Unless someone goes looking for it. Outsized reactions create a spectacle that attracts attention and lure us into siloed echo chambers before we can blink. Then all we see are the content, articles, and “hot takes” that reaffirm our packaged identity. We stop thinking critically and we forget the pieces of ourselves that do not fit easily within an algorithm. With the broadening usage of generative AI, the speed at which our identities flatten is accelerating. Generative AI by nature is a regurgitation of existing knowledge packaged with haste for the user it already knows. It knows what you are looking for and how you want it presented, just like your social media algorithm. It knows you are not looking to be challenged when searching for information. You are looking to be affirmed. 

New, original (if such a thing exists) insights will not be discovered on your feed or from your favorite AI chatbot. What you will find is what you already like and shared disdain for what you do not. We see this with #bookstagram. When we operate on a shared assumption of agreement with our preferences, we lose the nuances of critique. For example, there are the circles that love Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros and those that hate them. The feedback of the naysayers is consistently flat. There’s the moral argument: they’re just [insert magical creature] porn. There’s the academy argument: the writing is terrible. Champions of the books retort in opposite. Accusations of AI usage abound, as does the recent favorite quip for books that make you think more than an action movie: “show don’t tell.” Dialogue between opposing viewpoints has dissolved into faux enlightened shorthand like these, meaning nothing more than I don’t like this. There’s no substantive engagement with the content or thoughtful critique. It’s on to the next 30 second reel derived from what already won attention, not that which is novel, broadens understanding, or challenges beliefs. 

We feed the flywheel that flattens our identity by continued engagement. Just like AI, we stop consuming original sources and give credence to the derivative that affirms our opinions. The new social contract is not for safety or protection. It is for visibility. We as humans are desperate to be heard and understood. More than two decades ago, the internet provided access to infinite information and brought people together from disparate backgrounds to find commonalities. What was once a source of connection soured into isolation. Now run by algorithms, social media rewards those who are chronically online and respond to trends in real time. In such an equation, thoughtfulness of response or consideration of alternative perspectives are not meaningful variables. 

Printed texts were once the primary source of information. To read widely and deeply was virtuous*. The contents of printed media were vetted for accuracy and truthfulness. There was a book for every reader and niche interest. As a library kid, I grew up escaping my sometimes difficult reality into fantasy worlds and nonfiction topics of curiosity. I fed my mind in a way that took time and followed nonsensical paths to outside observers. In any given week during middle school, I read disparate texts such as Machiavelli’s The Prince,  Kafka’s Die Verwandlung, Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat, and engineering textbooks. I wandered the library for hours, picking up books with striking covers until I found one that intrigued me. An algorithm could have sped up and refined that process, but it would have also narrowed what I read and calcified my preferences. That feels like a loss. 

Nearly every industry feeds from the economy of attention, publishing included. Publishing is first and foremost a business. Agents and publishers make money by selling what is popular, leveraging existing audiences. It is a risk averse industry and every book that makes it to shelves is a calculated gamble. We can blame them for publishing the 387th version of the same trope, but the reality is they print what is profitable. The flattening of our identities and preferences in digital spaces, the same channels by which they research trends and capitalize on with marketing, feeds into which books are published and which linger in obscurity. 

As a writer, I want my work to be published and to find its home with readers. What I don’t want is to flatten my stories to be more palatable for an algorithm or for readers who don’t want to be challenged. As a neurodivergent person, seeing things differently and struggling to engage with others in the expected way define my existence. When I set out on my journey to become a published author last year, I dreamed of achieving the same success I reached in my prior career. That hasn’t happened. 

I’ve struggled to mold myself and my writing into clean genre lines and algorithmic gold. Part of that is mental. For the first 35 years of my life, the pursuit of affirmation drove me. Studying the reactions of others helped me craft a mask that led to success by many measures. A nationally ranked athlete. An Ivy League graduate. The big house and the nice car. A career making $300k+ per year. But I was also deeply unhappy. We moved to a new country, enabling me to pursue my dream in a financially responsible way without time pressure. Constructing a new mask to find algorithmic success feels like a failure. Paralysis sets in whenever a content idea pops up. In the last few months, I’ve posted on social media less than a handful of times to crickets. 

Now I’m making the conscious choice to give up. I’m giving up trying to make what I write more palatable to the wrong audiences. I’m giving up agonizing over how to package myself for social media. This journey started because I wanted to stop alienating myself from my truest self, the me I would be without first looking to see who watches. I write for myself. I write for women who have been traumatized and disillusioned by life, but still champion love. I write for my daughters, so that they’ll know the warning signs of problematic behavior from friends and boyfriends sooner than I did. I write for readers who spend more time reflecting on what they consume than watching reaction videos. Those audiences don’t fit into any clean algorithmic silo and I’m okay with that. I guess what I’m saying is I’m choosing to be unlikeable. 

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*The relationship between reading and privilege is a tangent for a future post.