Does the algorithm always win?

Plus: Anthony Bourdain’s legacy on his 70th birthday

Jun 25, 2026

As a Gen Zer, I am acutely aware—and highly irritated by—the homogenisation of basically everything. There’s the death of personal style and of having original interests, and the conundrum of: are you doing something because you want to, or is it just trendy and the algorithm is telling you that you’ll like it? It’s more than just young people moaning that it’s hard to be unique these days. Big tech corporations are able to shape, control and commodify much of global culture. On this account, we are becoming one globalised blob, which is easy to define, and even easier to exploit.

Some social media platforms have sought to provide a solution to this problem by only serving you a feed of the accounts you have chosen to follow or subscribe to. But the sad truth is—that isn’t a money maker. My colleague Benjamin Clark takes the example of Patreon, a platform which allows creators to create paid, subscriber-only content away from their other social media channels. What started off as a platform to help creators earn a fair wage, ended up having “little choice but to try to beat the social media giants at their own game”.

Another platform which Ben discusses is Substack, which even our (outgoing) prime minister Keir Starmer posts on. It seems like he set up a Substack account in an attempt to be closer to the people—and perhaps appear more down to earth? But as with most of Starmer’s comms, it wasn’t very effective. On today’s episode of Media Confidential, Alan and Lionel discuss how Starmer interacted with various forms of media, and speculate on whether, if he becomes PM, Andy Burnham will be better at it.

Someone who was, and still is, well-loved on the internet is the late chef-provocateur Anthony Bourdain—who would have turned 70 today. There is a cross-generational affection for Bourdain who found fame in his travel documentaries showcasing international cuisines as well as human storytelling. In today’s culture newsletter, Alys Key writes about Bourdain’s legacy and how it must be protected from “boiling him down to a thinking man’s Lonely Planet”. Key adds: “It would not be a surprise to me if an AI Bourdain app, supposedly trained on his philosophies, has already been vibe-coded into existence.”

Do get in touch with your thoughts on today’s edition at kathryn.schoon@prospectmagazine.co.uk.