How Your Algorithm Is Ruining Your Taste
By Yoda Garveyson
Your Algorithm Is Ruining Your Taste
We live in a world where the algorithm knows you better than your best friend. It knows what you like, what you search, how long you scroll, and what you’ll probably buy next Friday. It’s convenient, yes. But here’s the problem: while it’s feeding you exactly what you think you want, it’s starving you of what you might love — the unexpected, the challenging, the different. And that’s how your algorithm is quietly ruining your taste.
1. You’re Not Curating — You’re Being Programmed
Taste is about selection. Real taste comes from exploration, risk, even boredom — flipping through dusty records, stumbling on obscure films, or discovering music you’ve never heard from a continent you’ve never visited.
Algorithms don’t reward curiosity. They reward patterns. If you liked trap soul last week, they’ll give you 50 more artists who sound just like Bryson Tiller. If you watched one true crime docuseries, now your whole feed is filled with murder mysteries. The result? You get stuck in a loop of sameness.
2. Everything Starts to Look the Same
Scroll through TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts, and you’ll notice it: everyone’s using the same trending sound, same aesthetic filters, same cuts. What started as creative inspiration becomes copy-paste culture and leaves you stuck in a never ending matrix.
This digital monoculture is killing originality. The algorithm doesn’t push content based on quality — it pushes content that keeps people on the platform. And more often than not, that means safe, familiar, addictive. Over time, your eye adjusts. Your standard shifts. Your taste gets dull.
3. You’re Not Discovering — You’re Being Fed
Remember when you had to dig for something good? Whether it was underground mixtapes, late-night indie films, or that hole-in-the-wall gallery with raw artwork — discovery required effort. And effort shaped your taste. It gave you an edge.
Now, discovery is passive. You don’t find it — it finds you. Or more accurately, it’s delivered to you. And when everything’s tailored to your past clicks, you never break out of your own digital bubble. Your potential to grow creatively — as a listener, viewer, or thinker — gets stunted.
4. The Risk of Losing Cultural Flavor
Culture evolves through friction, contrast, and rebellion. But when algorithms smooth out every edge for the sake of engagement, we risk losing subcultures, underground movements, and the voices that don’t fit the mold.
Algorithms are trained on mass behavior. So if the majority moves in one direction, that’s where the current goes. Niche art, unpopular opinions, and non-viral genius get drowned out. In the process, your feed — and your taste — becomes a bland echo of the mainstream.
So What Can You Do About It?
Go manual. Make playlists, browse new sections, read outside your usual genre. Break the loop. Follow creators who challenge you. Not just ones who agree with you or entertain you. Support the underground. That weird zine, that bedroom rapper, that unpolished podcast — give them your time and attention. Take digital fasts. Give your brain a break from autoplay and algorithmic suggestions. Let your curiosity reawaken.
Feel free to discover our music on streaming platforms. Search : “BEEZY” + “GWOP University Recordings”
The algorithm is a tool, not a taste-maker. If you don’t take control, it will define your preferences for you — safe, predictable, and marketable. But if you choose to step outside the bubble, you might just rediscover what it means to have taste — wild, weird, and fully your own.
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