I wake up at 5 a.m., make a cup of coffee, then sit down to check my email and other things on the internet. I see that Eric Weinstein has posted a new podcast with his brother, Bret Weinstein, and has also made an appearance on Sam Harris’s podcast. Sam Harris was on David Fuller’s podcast the day before, and David Fuller is scheduled to appear on Bret Weinstein’s show tomorrow. Mikhalia Peterson posted a two hour interview with her father, Jordan Peterson, who had just been on Joe Rogan for a three hour episode earlier this week. Rogan has posted a new podcast with Michael Malice, Michael Malice has just uploaded a two hour discussion with Curtis Yarvin, and Thaddeus Russell has released a new interview with Curtis Yarvin as well. Theo Von posted a new podcast with Michael Norman, who himself has also posted a two hour live-stream with three other people I don’t recognize. John David Ebert has a new video out discussing the recent riots in New York City. Brain Koppelmen posted a new interview with Edward Norton. Rich Roll has a new video up with Jocko Willink. Oh, and Hermitix just released a new episode featuring Nick Land, which I definitely need to listen to.

How can I ever keep up? I already wake up before dawn, social life during the coronavirus lockdown has grinded to a halt, and I don’t even work full-time. If I had three days for every one, I’d still be behind.

And if I can barely keep up with all the content being produced inside of my own little bubble, how will I ever have the time to explore other bubbles, or to expand my own? How do I get out of this endless, transitive loop of X appearing on Y, Y appearing on Z, and Z appearing on X? If even just two or three of the content creators I follow already produce more content than I can consume in a single day, how the hell do I ever get exposed to other, radically distinct points of view?

I am trapped in a bubble due to its near infinite size.

We often blame the recent bubbling of individuals on recommendation algorithms, built by world-class PhDs in west coast offices, using state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to keep us endlessly clicking on “next,” or, even worse, stripped of all autonomy while auto-play takes control. Since the recommendations are driven by what we’ve consumed in the past, we’re unendingly given more and more of the same. But for all the PhDs working on them, the algorithms don’t even seem all that advanced. If someone liked Bret Weinstein on Sam Harris and Sam Harris on Joe Rogan, do we really need a PhD to determine that they’ll also like Bret Weinstein on Joe Rogan?

As liberal as tech companies are, and as much as they publicly support diversity, their algorithms are actually radically conservative and not diverse at all: designed to protect the bottom line, they take little risks and give us what they “know” we will like, which are things similar to what we already like. This ossifies our point of view rather than expands it. The tech companies behind these algorithms embrace diversity in the public eye (where it benefits them) by ensuring they’re hiring diverse teams and proclaiming solidarity with progressive social movements, but they quickly flip a switch to extreme conservatism when it comes to extracting from us the next click in order to increase engagement and, as a result, their revenue.

But that’s all besides the point, the point here is that there’s more to the story than tech companies and recommendation algorithms when it comes to bubbling. The algorithms would quickly run dry if there wasn’t an endless amount of content being generated—they need to be fed, and in 2020 there is an inexhaustible amount of digital fodder out there. I will literally never be able to exhaust my bubble.

It’s never been easier to record a conversation with someone and make it available to the rest of the world, and so now everyone is doing it, and we end up with isolated, disjoint networks of individuals who all appear on each others’ shows. Is what Eric Weinstein has to say on David Fuller’s show all that different than what he says on Joe Rogan’s, or Bret Weinstein’s, or Lex Fridman’s? And is what David Fuller has to say in conversation with Eric Weinstein all that different than what he says to Sam Harris, when Sam Harris is on his show or when he’s on Sam’s? If I ever were to find the time to consume all of these podcasts, would I actually be learning more, or would I just be deepening grooves already well-worn?

Podcast episodes can run for two to three hours, which is almost 20% of an average person’s waking day. There is unequivocally a significant upside to their length: especially when compared to the one-minute soundbites of the mainstream news, the longer format of podcasts allows for context to be established and nuance to be explored. But this benefit quickly vanishes for anyone other than new listeners if the guests, topics, and ideologies are the same thing over and over again. And considering that it’s these ultra-conservative recommendation algorithms introducing new listeners, any new listener who arrives has likely come from a very similar ideological land. How many new listeners to Eric Weinstein weren’t already Sam Harris listeners, or vice versa?

And what is the true intellectual quality of all this content? Most of it sounds deep, thoughtful, profound, and open-minded, but if someone is putting out two to three hours of audio content every other day, how well thought out can it really be? How original can it be? How deep can it actually go? I mean, how much time have they spent considering other points of view on whatever it is they’re talking about? If a current event less than forty-eight hours old is discussed on a podcast, they physically could not have spent more than a day or two thinking about it and researching it.

Conversations are a form of extemporaneous speech, and when we speak extemporaneously we almost always are just reiterating what we already “know,” think, and believe. To truly understand new things, to see new things, to see things from new points of view, requires time and thought, silent contemplation, multiple drafts and revisions, dreams, sleepless nights, visits to libraries, and long walks in the park.

There’s an unfortunate, capitalistic, competitive phenomenon here as well. I’m sure a lot of these content creators are just as exhausted and overwhelmed as the listeners are. Given the ease of generating and releasing content, an initial few inundates the world with their voice and views, and as a result everyone else has to maintain a similar amount of output in order to stay relevant and not get drowned out. Keep in mind that most content creators are making a living doing this. The more they put out, the more money they make. Some support their families doing this.

It’s not all that unlike young adults streaming themselves playing video games on Twitch. People who like to play the same game and share similar strategic views get together and monetize their play by streaming it, and for some reason, millions of people watch. No one on either end of this relationship is growing. The streamers are playing the same game, on the same map, with the same people over and over again. The populace mindlessly watches. Listening to two people converse who largely agree on everything, and who you largely agree with on everything, isn’t all that different.

But what if things were different? What if some days there was no new content from within my bubble for me to consume, and I had to go out exploring for other things? What if the recommendation algorithms ran out of things to recommend? What if, just like Tinder, YouTube eventually displayed: “Sorry, we have no new matches for you.” This scenario is almost unimaginable, but assuming it, it’s quite easy to imagine what I’d do: I’d go out on my own looking for something else to consume. Maybe I’d stumble upon a podcast that the algos wouldn’t dare recommend, would flag as too risky for losing me as a reliable and predictable revenue stream. Maybe I’d find something radically different than what I normally consume, and spontaneously think: “Hm, that looks interesting.” Maybe I’d listen to it and think that the person made a good point or two. Maybe I watch a Contrapoints video, stumble into Cuck Philosophy, discover Three Arrows. I enter a new bubble, and then, restocked and refueled, the recommendation algorithms kick back in. I’m then served more and more content from within this new bubble, but as my exploration is going on, content is still trickled out by the creators in my original bubble, which the algorithms still recommend to me given my well-established history. I keep a connection to my old point of view while exploring a new one. A few months later, I exhaust that second bubble and go exploring for a third one. As I’m in the third I still receive a trickle from both the first and second bubbles. On and on. My perspective perpetually broadens.

It’s counter-intuitive, but the increase in the amount of content available has likely narrowed our points of view rather than expanded them. We need less content available so that we can quickly deplete the content that we agree with, and free ourselves to consume radically other points of view.