If nothing is curated, how do we find things

Algorithms vs Human Curation

• Many agree that algorithmic feeds (music, video, social) have shifted from “help me find good stuff” to “maximize engagement and profit,” often trapping users in bubbles and discouraging surprise.
• Others argue today’s tools are objectively more powerful: for things like finding hikes or local events, modern review sites, maps, and apps beat guidebooks and word-of-mouth – if users take responsibility rather than blaming “the algorithm.”
• Some point to examples like older Pandora, college radio, or certain streaming recommendation systems as evidence that algorithmic curation can work when tuned to user benefit rather than ad metrics.

Discovery, Browsability, and the Loss of “Wandering”

• Several people mourn the loss of “browsing” the web, radio, or TV: scanning lists, racks, or schedules and bumping into unexpected things.
• Modern interfaces strip out tools for self-determined exploration in favor of infinite scrolls and opaque ranking, making users feel like they’re always chasing the feed rather than choosing pathways.
• Some think the web itself has degraded into SEO spam, AI slop, and walled gardens, with discovery increasingly happening via low-friction but shallow surfaces like Instagram or TikTok.

Trust, Critics, and Gatekeeping

• One camp supports a revival of professional critics and niche curators as filters over an overwhelming cultural firehose, recalling magazines, radio programmers, and specialist shops.
• Others warn that “professional curation” historically meant bias, payola, and censorship; they see today’s explosion of voices as a messy but better alternative to a few centralized gatekeepers.
• There’s broad agreement that trust is central: whether the curator is a critic, a friend, a DJ, or an algorithm, their incentives and transparency matter more than the mechanism.

Shared Culture vs Fragmentation

• Many miss earlier eras when radio, broadcast TV, or limited record stores created a shared cultural baseline; now conversations about media often stall because no one has seen the same things.
• Counterarguments: kids and subcultures today still have shared experiences, just mediated by platform-specific influencers and algorithms rather than national channels; the “shared culture” is more global but more fragmented.

What People Actually Do to Find Things

• Reported strategies include: local/online radio (especially human-programmed), newsletters, webrings, personal blogs, indie search engines, film/music critics, public libraries, niche forums, Bandcamp/RateYourMusic/Discogs, Trakt/Stremio, and curated playlists or DJ mixes.
• Word of mouth—friends, trusted posters, small communities—is repeatedly cited as the most satisfying and reliable form of discovery.

AI and Open Platforms

• Some see LLMs and open-source models as promising personal aggregators over scattered sources; others distrust any new software given pervasive misaligned incentives.
• There’s debate over open platforms: some call for open, data-accessible systems to enable better user-driven curation; others note dozens of open-source social platforms already exist yet rarely succeed, partly because they neglect usability, evangelism, and user “freedom” in everyday features.