Remember a few decades back when a group of people huddled around a TV? What about scenes from movies where people would sit around a large radio? Similar to experiences like movie theatres or live performances, at home media consumption was a communal act.

People do sit around together to watch something on Netflix (or one of the other “something+" streaming services). But many also sit around whilst each having a smartphone in their palms as various individuals scroll through them unconsciously at various intervals throughout the communal Netflix that is being streamed on the bigger screen. 

This individualization seems to be one evolution of media. The evolution being neither good nor bad in the absolute sense. It is just what it is. The current state of media seems to be physically disconnected while individualized in access and taste. 

Today, we each form a world tailored to our desires. Recommended videos, images, and audio that fit our interests. Various mediums that fit our attention spans, whether they be 10 secs or 2 hours. To each their own. 

Differences in preferences don’t matter because it’s our own little world. A world that is an extension of the deeper and truly honest side of you that algorithms know better than your own loved ones are allowed to. 

The recommendations and garnering of your attention are subtle. You don’t realize the pull for your attention yet the compounding influence on your mind is definite. 

Selling through this medium evolved to be a gentle nudge rather than a hard push. You see tailored ads that hit certain parts of your brain. The most seamless process, designed so your instincts bring you to the promised lands of the checkout page, turn you into an unintended consumer. 

Gone are the rituals of the past where set times meant gathering around a metal box in a group to digest homogenized material. Gone are the days of relying on a bullshit detector that only lost out to the most cunning individual salesman. 

In a world of hyper customization and individualization, is it possible that our desires will evolve to crave more of the less polished and raw? In a world that has already been filtered for individual tastes, curated in partnership with one’s own desires and the writers of code, could the desire reside in the unfiltered? 

I know I like movies in the genre of black comedy and satire. I know I like books on philosophy and history. But instead of merely consuming the completed works, will my consumption inevitably evolve to crave access to the entire process? The unfiltered minds of the creators themselves and what they do every week in pursuit of the filtered end form I’ll consume? 

It could be as simple as the human desire to feel connected with another through the understanding of the sheer normality and mundaneness that constitutes human life. Or….it can be a desire to escape the self-enforced filtered bubble of finished products I find myself in. 

I can’t help but think the buying of raw materials, the proverbial ‘making of the sausage’, will garner a greater toehold to the evolving landscape of media.