Algorithmic Modernism

If you just bought whatever showed up in your first ten TikToks, you’d end up with the same apartment as everyone else doing the same thing. Cloud couch, Stanley cup, LED strips behind the TV. The same apartment in every city.

It’s a way for people to signal “I have taste” without having to develop any. You scroll, you buy, you end up in the same cohort as a million other people who thought they were discovering something. The resulting aesthetic: a kind of default taste generated by recommendation engines. The algorithm as your interior designer.

The apartments look good in photos but feels like an interior shop. Everything’s optimized for the grid. Highly personalized, but somehow very generic.