#hipsters — Public Fediverse posts

Off-season, non-SXSW Austin is its own sort of weird

AUSTIN, Tex.

It feels like I barely visited my favorite part of Texas, and that’s not just because my trip here for the Connectivity Standards Alliance’s Unify conference only spanned three days. This visit has also reminded me that SXSW, my usual experience of Austin aside from one trip here in September of 2018 for the Online News Association’s conference, is not a reliable reflection of the city.

The sidewalks this week aren’t crowded with hipsters and would-be hipsters (i.e., me) wearing the same conference badge, in the process making the number of unhoused people here a little more obvious. Bars and restaurants downtown go by their normal names instead of being rebranded as “activations” for one #brand or another. And instead of delightful spring weather, it’s ghastly hot out–not Vegas-in-August scorching, but also much more humid.

Avoiding that heat by spending so much of my time in Unify’s air-conditioned confines at the Hilton Downtown made this even more of a fake visit for me. I did at least think to stop by a dive bar off Red River Street Wednesday night to get in some local color and put some money into the non-hotel economy.

One other change I noticed compared to March: Austin’s streets seem to have picked up a lot more robotic occupants. Waymos are as ubiquitous as ever, but I also spotted several of Austin-based Avride’s refitted Hyundai Ioniq 5s, at least two Zoox toasters on wheels and one of Tesla’s two-seat, gold-colored Cybercabs–plus delivery robots rolling up and down sidewalks.

(I didn’t get a good enough look at most of the non-Waymo vehicles to see if they had humans at the controls or otherwise overseeing them. Nor did I get rides on any of them, since it was such a short walk from my hotel to the conference venue.)

But one part of Austin did take me right back to my usual marketing-spring-break nonsense: being greeted outside by the airport by the squawk of grackles.

The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same

"From the generic hipster cafe to the ‘Instagram wall’, the internet has pushed us towards a kind of global ubiquity – and this phenomenon is only going to intensify"

"The homogeneity contrasted with the overall hipster philosophy of the 2010s, namely, that by consuming certain products and cultural artefacts you could proclaim your own uniqueness apart from the mainstream crowd – in this case a particular coffee shop rather than an obscure band or clothing brand. “The irony of it all is that these spaces are supposed to represent spaces of individuality, but they’re incredibly monotonous."

"This homogenisation is not just a phenomenon of our own moment; it is a consequence of changes that happened long before algorithmic social media feeds, and is just as likely to intensify in the future."

"When her cafe started selling coffee online, Facebook and Instagram seemed to throttle its reach – unless it bought advertising and boosted the social media company’s own profits. It felt like algorithmic blackmail: pay our toll or we won’t promote you."
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Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka,
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/16/the-tyranny-of-the-algorithm-why-every-coffee-shop-looks-the-same
#globalisation #homogenisation #culture #sameness #uniformity #monoculture #GlobalUbiquity #hipsters #LifestyleBrag #Instagrammability #uniqueness #authenticity #individuality #instagram #cafes #consumers #habitus #NonPlaces #DigitalPlatforms #algorithm #TechnoFeudalism #refeudalisation