The Mindlessness of Kraft Video
content gooning, 'for the algo', medium worries
I haven’t had a good relationship with the end or the beginning of the year. Winter hits hard, I haven’t a Hallmark family. Christmas, New Year and my birthday all march on in quick succession. I often, like other people, drop off during this period. I sit in a routine; I go to get my shopping every week, I go to the movies, engage in way-too-long phone calls, and find myself intoxicated by content.
Two types of video snatch my attention into a chokehold, holding me under a pit with knuckles grating the top of my head. I hate them both.
The first are those ASMR slime videos released by the Los Angeles limited company OG Slimes. The two founders of the company describe themselves as ‘Gen Z slime creators’. The whole thing is a trap. Their videos feature dreamlike music over wall-to-wall shots of slime being scooped with a spring-loaded ice-cream spoon while their ‘scoopability’ is ranked on a scale from 1 to 10.
The second are ‘Kraft videos’. Someone drawing, sewing, paint-pouring, airbrushing, building, lathing, or printmaking. Kraft as in Kraft Singles, as in American Cheese, as in expertly formulated to mimic an enhanced experience of the real thing.
The videos are cut fast, their duration is unspecified, and each is in competition with the media I want to see. The videos are almost always from an account I haven’t followed, yet liked by someone I have.
I started thinking about ubiquitous online trappings after reading Adrian Daub’s essay ‘Auto Mind’ in the most recent issue of Granta (165). In it he writes about Germany’s relationship to the car, a device that kills and will kill thousands of people each year. Though the car is so culturally engrained, no real question is ever raised over its use.
In the last few months, there has been an uptick in users on Instagram using the phrase, for the algo. Usually, the text accompanies a selfie, a type of content the majority of users believe is favoured higher than others. I’ve seen the use of for the algo (meaning ‘for the algorithm’) as a means to propel political dissemination; for the most part, in advocating for the people of Palestine, spreading news, and information about marches and other demonstrations. A category of content known to be blacklisted by Instagram’s algorithm.
Instagram, as I and the people I follow use it, is an events calendar, news source, business profile, product marketer and scrapbook. When the platform has particular uses favoured by its users, these craft videos appear like potholes ready to flatten a tire. Better yet, users are aware of these potholes and trappings in the system and so disguise their events, news bulletins and diary entries as sinkholes for prime placement by the algorithm.
Reels do better than posts, selfies do better than text. If I like and comment will I be rewarded for continued engagement on the platform? How do I make content as mindless and mesmerising as a top-down pottery-throwing Kraft video to call for a ceasefire in a conflict that has killed over twenty thousand people?
It is a flaw that, socially, politically, we rely on a Silicone Valley product devised and controlled by Meta to disseminate information. That all content is flattened into a homogeneity without hierarchies, no video or image is more important than the last—there is no front page item, unless, it can hold our attention.
We are more engaged, more advertised-to, as a result of ‘cheating’ this system; by driving engagement via likes, comments, shares, or responses, to ensure those images and videos we care about are seen. Each user is democratically given marketing analytics to judge the efficacy of their most recent campaigns. These figures can be compared with past promotions or divided by follower count to discover a user’s total engagement ratio.
What is the end goal here, in continuing to adopt these conditions? With the spread of AI, with the reality of images under question, how will we stay on top of engagement? Do we continue to sink further into these spaces online? Dig the pothole deeper?
Is it all a necessary evil? I’m not quite advocating for an alternative, likewise with trashing all car production. I’m a fan of mailing lists but that doesn’t mean other people don’t wade every day through retail marketing and institution newsletters in their email. I’m not sure how to cut through the noise. I’m not advocating we all flush our phones down the toilet, though I do want to.
I dislike ending a piece of text reaching for the thread that I started from, completing the circle. I dislike continuing in a system where those inside are so aware of its shortcomings. I will be doing as I have done, removing apps, finding more analogue methods of learning and attempting to go outside. I’m not sure if it’s enough to get away from the conditions perfected by slime scoopability ASMR videos, but I think it kind of has to be.
—Andy x