F UR A
F UR A: musical interventions
Music moves us—literally and figuratively. For many, it is an important indicator of who they are in the world. As any music snob knows, our musical tastes tell a lot about us. Dating sites have used “favorite song” as one telling factor to assess likely compatibility with potential partners.
The global recorded music industry revenues represent more than $25 billion dollars annually—and growing. (globalmusicreport.ifpi.org/)
In following their surveillance capital models, social media and audio streaming services exploit our love of music to wring out ever more identifying characteristics about us as individuals, taking our love of music and transforming it into cash.
Maybe you think the ability to add music is a fun way to jazz up your social media videos and posts. Maybe you believe that using certain songs will bring your posts to the attention of non-followers who are passionate about the music you selected. Both of these things could be true.
Maybe you also understand that your choice of musical element is processed by the platform’s algorithm, adding another detail to its ability to define and refine its understanding of what moves and motivates you—as well as refining its ability to define those individuals who interact with your posts.
It’s rather awesome how accurately many of these algorithms can predict what we might like and how our rejections of their missed predictions are then folded back in to refine ever further our digital identities as understood by the algorithms.
You probably also know that audio streaming services make their money not just off of your monthly paid subscription, but also on sales of your marketing profile as identified by their algorithms via your listening habits.
Maybe none of this bothers you. Maybe you hate it, but accept it as the price to pay for access to an app you enjoy. Or maybe you plant little bombs right where the algorithm lives www.instagram.com/reel/CUfk--eIvPt/?igs…, little disruptions that might do very little or nothing at all to change the situation, but nonetheless, make you feel the tiniest bit less powerless, and, anyway, it makes you laugh and smile; maybe others, too.
F UR A, short for F*CK UR ALGORITHM, exists to disrupt. Using granny panties, the age-old tradition of mooning, and a provocative sense of humor to communicate an anti-exploitation message on the very virtual ground where the algorithms are used to translate our interactions into profit.