Dada to Data: Allowing Chance to Break the Algorithm

One year into the ‘Great War’, a collective movement called ‘Dada’ was formed. Dada believed that the current trends of society naturally lead to current results. For example, going to war did not just materialise out of nowhere, but the ways in which we were living, thinking, communicating, tilled the soil that allowed the seeds of conflict to spawn. Some of Dada’s members thought that we should break away from convention in order to ensure that we jump off of our path leading to suffering. Art was being used for war propaganda, or as an asset in capitalism such as via advertising (also propaganda) or as a commodity. In order to do this, they embraced chance – something outside of human control. They allowed pictures to appear from the wood grain. They had gravity decide compositions. They let unexpected voices and grunts be part of the performances. All of this lack of control allowed a new starting point for discussions to emerge. By giving up control, they were able to break free from the cycles of the time ironically gaining control.

They were able to subvert the trends happening at the time, by not playing the game being presented to them. What are the trends of today? Genocide. Wars. Budding dictatorships. Capitalism that is creating vaster and vaster wealth gaps. The stripping of worker rights to fuel and exacerbate this gap. Etc. Etc.

Though, it is harder today to embrace chance. A lot fewer people today are discovering media, views, and voices by chance, rather, it is being served to them. This is done via social media and algorithms. It’s a system which is designed to keep you engaged. To keep you on the service.

It can start with a choice. The more ideal of the two. You search something like ‘football highlights’. Then, you get a lot of podcasts about players who have retired and are giving you their views. Okay, interesting. Then you get served more and more popular content within the genre. Suddenly, everyone in the fandom is all looking at the same people. It is a system that drives you toward a singularity.

The alternative is you go the front page of whatever service you are using. You see ten to twenty things that they cherry pick for you to see. The first post you like, or stare at for a little too long, causes the machine to whirl.

“Well, what’s the problem with that? It is showing me content which I like, which I want to see.”

There are two problems.

The algorithm is tuned to ‘engagement’, and unfortunately people are very easy to exploit when it comes to ‘engagement’. Often fear and anger are the easiest emotions to take advantage of. A post will say something that will elicit a response from people, usually a deep-seated fear or bias. For example, ‘migrants are coming here on boats and taking your jobs’.

Now, someone may have a small amount of ignorance or bias, and let that little bit of human roughness come out with a ‘like’ on this post. It does not mean they hate everyone who is brown, or that they think all migrants are evil. However, they have a seed of something in their mind.

Alternatively, the post may make a generalisation that is applied to you genuinely. You have lost your job or your money isn’t stretching as far as it used to. You have had a rough time. You are suffering.

Now, from this knee jerk response, the next time you look at social media, there will be more posts that make you angry. Suddenly, all you see are these posts that make you angry. The ‘problem’, which was a single post has become, to your point of view, all that everyone is talking about. Each of these posts has a slightly different angle that pushes you deeper and deeper down into a pit of resentment.

The algorithm does this with anything that upsets you.

It moulds who you are as a person. It makes you like every person tangentially similar to you. A homogenising force.

Recently I stayed with a family member for a few months. He was always tech illiterate, but during his most recent visit something was different. He had discovered ‘short form content’ while he was staying there. Over the months while he was staying here, I started to overhear a few oddities. The content he was watching referenced his home country and how everyone there was down on their luck. A lot of ‘we have it bad and there is nothing we can do’. At one point we were watching a TV show that had Meghan Markle in it. He said “oh, this is before she went retard.”

Now, I knew that some right leaning voters had issues with her, but honestly, I did not really know much about it. I generally do not follow celebrity related news. So, I sincerely asked “what do you mean?”.

He could not tell me. I have known this man for a long time. The truth is, he did not know. He had an opinion, which was that he really did not like someone, but could not articulate why. He was parroting what people ‘he trusted’ online had said.

What is interesting though, is that he did not ever choose to watch these ‘trusted’ people. The algorithm held his hand and led him to them. He had not consented to be radicalised. At one point, he got angry at something he saw, and the machine said, “more of that”.

Later, he showed me a conspiracy video, talking about how people with Jewish surnames are at high positions in government…

Another aspect of this homogenisation is that smaller cultures are being snuffed out via American influence due to vast amounts of media they produce and export. American films are just ‘films’, but films made anywhere else are ‘foreign films’, an other. This means that biases within America get spread through their media too. With how authoritarian the country has become, the worry is that this form of government will spread as well. It is a kind of memetic serfdom, where one nation’s narratives and biases become the unchosen defaults for everyone else.

When you scroll through Netflix or YouTube, you’re not just seeing entertainment – you’re absorbing a worldview. American individualism, American solutions to problems, American ways of seeing family, success, and conflict. The algorithm doesn’t just decide what you watch; it decides whose stories get told and whose get buried. By absorbing media from somewhere else (as well, I’m not saying to abandon American media), you are able to process everything differently.

Attention is money. This is mostly via advertising and cookies, where you, to many companies, become the product as well as the consumer. An ouroboros. Breaking away from what they want to show you frees you from hyper-capitalism. They lose power if you don’t sit at your trough with your mouth open. Short form content has accelerated this passive consumption. No decision is needed on your end. How long you stare is all that matters.

So, how can you avoid this?

I, personally, would say we mirror what we saw with the Dada movement. Embrace chance and keep embracing chance. Complacency allows structures to form. They cannot catch you if they cannot predict you.

Rather than allowing an algorithm to decide what to engage with, perhaps use community forums. What are other people sharing? Sort by new often. You will find lots of weird and interesting media that way. You will find people that are unheard which you can lend an ear to. You can discover something barely anyone else has.

An activity I enjoy is going to charity stores, and buying DVDs which I have never heard of. Some of them ‘look good’, and some I cannot even tell what they are. My local Oxfam has a deal of ‘8 DVDs for £3’. From the 8 DVDs you bought, put them in a random number generator. That is what you are watching tonight. Unsure? Too bad. You chose them at the shop, take your medicine. By ingesting media your gut is unsure of, I promise you will find value. Even a ‘shit film’, can have value. Sometimes a ‘shit film’ has the most value. It gives you a lot to think about. Charity shops also have the added bonus that they are a second-hand market. i.e., You are not supporting capitalism directly, and it is good for global waste.

The same applies to books. Close your eyes, feel across the bookshelf, and when you open your eyes, you will have a friend (or an enemy which you feel oddly fond of). I would have the rule personally that if it is a series, you start with the first book, but maybe your taste for chaos is stronger than mine.

A lot of the above bypasses the attention economy.

Again, weirdly with chance, by removing agency, you in a way get more control. You gain more cognitive sovereignty. Randomness-as-liberation as a concept does feel counterintuitive, but remember, it is your choice to engage openly with chance.

You can tweak these rules of chance in ways that best suit your personality type. You can start a book and realise it’s not for you. Our time on earth is limited after all. If you find something you like you can go down the rabbit hole of exploration deeper into the topic. A healthy dose of chance in one’s life is good.

Chance allows you to discover new things you may like. My reading into Dada, which influenced a lot of my current thinking, started because I found a book in a charity shop. I had seen ‘Dada’ stickers all around the city, so I thought I may as well have a look into it. Now I am doing my PhD on the topic. You never know where a fleeting moment can take you.

You are also able to make unexpected connections within your life like this. The serendipity which occurs from two different knowledge pathways overlapping is extremely rewarding. You start to realise how interconnected everything is, and that connection is hard to sever. If you are just on a recommendation timeline, you are walking on beaten ground. You miss the forest where true secrets remain. You have the ability to become different.

A process this rewarding must be very difficult… but in reality, it is extremely fun. Every day being new and full discovery, constantly growing as a person. Before today you had never listened to X, tasted Y, and spoke to Z, and now you can never go back. You never know what to expect. Challenge yourself.

I feel that it is extremely important that everyone becomes their own person. It is similar to Simondon and Deleuze’s theories of individuation. We are constantly becoming, and each new experience is something which helps to form who you are. You are never done learning – there is no destination.

But here’s the thing – individuation requires genuine encounters with difference. For Deleuze, we become through our encounters with the unexpected, the foreign, the resistant. Every time you bump up against something that doesn’t fit your current way of being, you have the chance to evolve. The algorithm eliminates these encounters. It gives you more of what you already are, not what you could become.

Simondon wrote about how we individuate through our relationship with our technical environment. But what happens when that technical environment is designed to keep us static? When the machine learns your patterns and feeds them back to you endlessly? You stop individuating. You stop becoming. You just are.

With an algorithm, we are all becoming homogenised. Pre-decided links of if you like this, you will like that’ lead to no unique experiences.”

Ever wonder why childhood feels so long, and as you get older the days come and go before you can blink? Children are always experiencing for the first time. Once life becomes mundane, you stop processing what you see to the same degree. New neural pathways aren’t being built, just galvanised. If you want to feel like you are living a little longer, roll the dice.

Maybe this all sounds small. Buying a random DVD. Picking a book blindfolded. Letting gravity decide where a picture sits. But that’s the point. The systems around us just need us to be predictable. They thrive when we move in straight lines.

The Dadaists knew this. By embracing chance, they escaped the patterns of their time. We can do the same. Chance keeps us open to possibility. It resists homogenisation, whether it comes from an algorithm or from our own habits.

Every odd film, every strange book, every unexpected connection is a reminder that we are still becoming. That we can still take detours. That the forest is still there, waiting.

Randomness is liberation. It is not the absence of choice, but the widening of it. The machine can predict a straight road. It cannot predict a stumble, a side path, a coin toss. And that’s exactly where life feels longest, and fullest, and most our own.