Most weeks, we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome Tony Wang, founder of the management consulting, brand strategy and research firm Office of Applied Strategy, which has just released a dossier that argues that culture and creativity have become stagnant due to what they call “hyper-optimization” and features interviews with people like New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka and Museum of Modern Art senior curator Paola Antonelli. (You can read the manifesto here and request a copy of the limited-run, print-only full dossier here—use “Embedded” as your referral code.)
Tony hate-reads trending content on LinkedIn, wishes Trixie Mattel would stream video games again, and sometimes pulls up nationwide NPD market penetration and consumer sales data to look at the top five products in a specific subcategory when he’s deciding what to buy. —Nick
Subscribe to Embedded, which is hardly optimized at all.
“I think a lot about whether algorithms are becoming more human-like, or humans are becoming more algorithmic.”
EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?
TONY WANG: Grace Gordon recently shared this YouTube video essay on her Substack around the power of edits that I was absorbed by for a good 40 minutes. I then go on Instagram Reels to decompress, and get this ad that made me chuckle because of how good the edit got me.
Also, this recommended post had me bawling:
EMBEDDED: What shows up on your TikTok For You page?
TONY WANG: I’m most chronically active on Instagram. My Instagram explore page tends to revolve around themes of kawaii nihilism, himbo inspiration, and chubby animals. I actually use TikTok to specifically follow Gen Z creators that talk in depth about art, fashion, media and culture such as @littlefreak26 or @umeboi.
I really appreciate the “outsider expert” opinions that a lot of these creators bring into the discourse, especially around topics that have been historically gated by institutions or other traditional barriers to entry (eg: requiring a certain educational background to be considered “qualified” to have a credible opinion).
EMBEDDED: Do you still tweet? Why?
TONY WANG: While I’d love to be completely off Twitter, I still lurk on the platform because 1) it’s where a lot of media and tech workers I follow are most active, and 2) it’s where “Porn Tumblr” moved to after being banned from the platform in 2018. But you’ll never find my account.
EMBEDDED: Have you tried any alternatives to Twitter?
TONY WANG: We have a lot of clients who ask us about the future of social media, and so while I’ve played around with newer social platforms like Mastodon, or region-specific platforms like Naver and Little Red Book, I’m not active on them beyond research purposes.
I’m personally more of a social media minimalist. With how quickly new features get stolen and repurposed on Big Social, content gets recycled into other social apps quickly even if you aren’t on those platforms.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
TONY WANG: It’s definitely the closest thing I have to an online calling card, it’s how a lot of people find and interact with me online. And true to my bio, people “ℭ𝔬𝔪𝔢 𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔤𝔶, 𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔶 𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔬𝔱 ™️.”
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
TONY WANG: I love YouTube’s ability to make me interested in topics I never knew I could be so fascinated by. From in-depth video essays about hyper-specific topics (like this 4-hour essay on why the Star Wars hotel failed) to special interest oriented videos for niche audiences (like this video on lobster tagging), I love the act of becoming fascinated by something new.
I also watch quite a bit of video game e-sports on YouTube, as well as Twitch VODs from my favorite streamers (I wish Trixie Mattel would stream video games again).
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
TONY WANG: While I read from larger outlets like the NYT and WaPo, I also like to follow more independent publications with a different editorial lens like Rest of World or The Intercept. Since I work with so many luxury houses and beauty brands, industry-specific publications like Business of Fashion and Puck’s Line Sheet are great resources. I also follow a lot of various Substacks, which I find has been the best way to discover and learn about new trends.
I enjoy reading news stories that get shared by specific groups I’m in on WhatsApp and Telegram, which typically are more geared towards a specific topic or theme. I also love following people on Instagram who generously share links to interesting news or content on their Stories (go follow my friend Nick Susi for just this).
Nowadays, information gathering is so much more fragmented, which can be fun when you’re able to enjoy the act of doomscrolling and be a bit of an information filter feeder on the web.
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
TONY WANG: Personally, I love to keep up with online discourse by having in-person discussions. I don’t really participate directly online via forums or comment threads.
Instead, I keep tabs on the online discussions that excite me the most, and bring them up as a discussion point when I’m out with friends or doing coffee hangs with peers in the industry. It’s a great way to have more in-depth, meaningful conversations and a nice excuse to check out cafes in the city.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?
TONY WANG: I absolutely loved Stellar Blade despite the online controversy surrounding its character designs. I mean who doesn’t have the power fantasy of being a hot anime cyborg babe whose hair clip literally transforms into an oversized sword.
I also had a lot of thoughts around the Elden Ring DLC’s scaling mechanic with the scadutree fragments, but I digress.
EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?
TONY WANG: Word of mouth; snooping on what people are reading in public; browsing in-person at bookstores like Printed Matter, Dashwood or McNally Jackson; and checking out the viewing history of friends that have access to my streaming accounts to see what content they’ve been watching lately.
EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?
TONY WANG: The trustworthiness of online consensus (which can be more easily manufactured than ever with brigading, bot accounts, misinformation, etc) and traditional social metrics of engagement have become less reliable as users de-platform for greener pastures. Much like the idea of a “finsta” account, which gained popularity in the mid 2010’s, users are increasingly turning to private social media communities that aren’t indexed online and thus resilient to being infiltrated by bad faith actors. Yancy Strickler coined this trend the Dark Forest Theory of the Internet and it continues to hold true today.
What’s been exciting for me to observe is how these micro-communities are forming on platforms like Discord, Telegram and Whatsapp and are being used to coordinate online and offline fan activities across different passion corridors, like fan rituals for the Eras and Renaissance tours. The new influencer will become the server admin or power user in these social media spaces. Being able to carve out these private social spaces that can’t be indexed or discovered by search engines are critical to resisting the flattening effect that the algorithm has on culture.
The comeback of Pinterest and resurgence of interest in blogging amongst Gen Z users speaks to the same desire to engage with social media in a more meaningful way that feels more intentional and is less passive. I worked with my friend Phil Chang and his creative agency C47 Creative to conduct an ethnographic study on Gen Z teenagers for a $15b fintech company, and the most common theme we heard was a desire to stop consuming empty media calories via doom scrolling. It’s this positive friction that users across generations are looking to bring back into their lives as culture feels more repetitive than ever. The algorithm excels at incrementality, so it prioritizes content that is similar to something that already performed well. Content creators follow these signals to build their followings and ultimately self-reinforce this shallow trend cycle. Optimization works well when you’re building a tech product; but as an operating model for culture, it leads to stagnation.
I also think a lot about whether algorithms are becoming more human-like, or humans are becoming more algorithmic as we train each other in a cat-and-mouse game for online relevance and attention. And as generative AI gets better at generating compelling synthetic output, I can’t help but wonder if it’s really because of how sophisticated AI has become, or how formulaic and uncreative mainstream culture has become as a commercial endeavor.
These are all dynamics we explore and connect more deeply in the latest OAS think tank project, a research dossier on the cultural phenomenon of hyper-optimization in culture.
EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?
TONY WANG: So many, but my top picks would be: Lauren Sherman’s The Line Sheet; Nikita Walia’s Thinking Out Loud, and Matt Klein’s ZINE.
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
TONY WANG: My sister!
EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?
TONY WANG: Not my sister.
EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, Slack, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?
TONY WANG: Mostly gaming-related groups to read lore theories.
EMBEDDED: How has using LinkedIn benefitted you, if at all?
TONY WANG: It’s a cesspool of cringe, but damn do I love to hate-read trending content.
EMBEDDED: Do you typically start searches on Google, Reddit, TikTok, or another source? Have you found Google’s “generative AI” summaries helpful?
TONY WANG: I love using Google advanced search operators. Since forgetting how to create macros in Excel, this is the closest thing I have to feeling like a pro user from my management consulting days.
EMBEDDED: What most excites you about AI chatbots and text and art generators? What most concerns you?
TONY WANG: Exciting: Using Sora or another text-to-video model to create an anime series one day.
Concerning: Data custodianship of creative content online—especially as human creativity becomes more and more valuable as training data for generative AI in a sea of synthetic output.
EMBEDDED: Are you currently playing any console, computer, or phone games?
TONY WANG: Elden Ring, Stellar Blade, FF7 Rebirth and Wukong.
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
TONY WANG: 🤠 because of how cheeky that face looks; but also check out Ruby Thelot’s analysis on the iconography of the cowboy in recent popular culture.
EMBEDDED: What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?
TONY WANG: Visual kei Japanese gothic metal rock (Malice Mizer, Versailles, Dir En Grey) will never not be in style in my music rotation!
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
TONY WANG: Does Grindr count?
EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?
TONY WANG: Recycled animal memes I’ve seen dozens of times already but will still cherish like it’s the first time I’ve seen it in my life.
EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?
TONY WANG: When I was in elementary school, I’d visit my grandparents nearly every summer in China and buy these local bootleg DVDs of American movies (like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings) with the most comically mistranslated subtitles. I wish someone would upload a whole library of them because they’re so hilarious to watch.
EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?
TONY WANG: I’m most active on Grailed. One thing I love about the platform is finding people put memorabilia from cultural moments for sale at outrageous prices, like this Erewhon x Cactus Plant Flea Market plastic cup for $690. It reminds me of Neopets, when people would use their stores to show off their most coveted in-game items. The price was there to reinforce the item’s status in the store as a non-commercial offering. I love when users repurpose a tech feature for a completely different context. Then again, maybe someone actually would buy a plastic cup for $690? Certainly not me, my last Grailed buy was a Dior tactical military vest from Kim Jones’ FW19 menswear collection.
EMBEDDED: Is there a site you like for product recommendations? How do you decide, for example, which air filter to buy?
TONY WANG: I sometimes ask friends; I sometimes check Wirecutter; and I sometimes pull up nationwide NPD market penetration and consumer sales data to look at the top five products in a specific subcategory as my shortlist for what to buy. That’s how I created my most recent skincare routine. You’re welcome, Bum Bum Cream!
EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?
