Algorithmic Capital

And Then What?

A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with my guy Jared in my kitchen about The Breakfast Club moving its episodes from YouTube to Netflix. Off the cuff, I blurted out a phrase, that in the moment I thought I invented: ‘Algorithmic Capital’. Meaning the motion a creator gets on the internet from high-value engagement like watch-time, subscriptions, shares, comments. Shit that platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Spotify and Tik Tok care about in the moment thus accelerating visibility or motion of a post or a channel.

When I said it, Jared was like “Algorithmic Capital… Oh, that’s good”. It felt like a real Eureka moment. I was ready to trademark that shit and then recently I googled it and found out there was already a book by that name. But that book’s definition was different from mine. It’s talking about the new role of the algorithm in the context of capitalism. I’m talking about the digital currency you build up on platforms where algorithm plays the role of kingmaker. The “capital” part is a nod to the intangible capitals like Cultural Capital, Social Capital, Political Capital etcetera etcetera. Concepts that were brilliantly introduced to world by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.

I guess it’s ok for two definitions to exist, in my head there were two Fyre Fest documentaries and both did well. Even the word ‘viral’ has two definitions. One is medical and the other one is cultural. But allow me to bring it full circle. Virality is the algorithmic capital version of winning the lottery. What a lottery winner does with their money (economic capital) all depends on how ready they were for the moment or how quickly they get ready. One can squander algorithmic capital the same way you can “blow money fast” by failing to convert that windfall of audience into something durable. My formula for sustainability is to always ask myself “and then what?”

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There are tons of stories in Hip Hop, where someone in the streets “hits a lick” and uses that to break into the music industry. The legendary story of Master P flipping a $10,000 malpractice settlement into a record store in Richmond, California and then flipping that into the wildly successful label: No Limit Records. To me, that story is similar to the story of Tyla turning a viral moment of her pouring water on herself in Rwanda and then flipping it into the “Water” dance challenge, which turned the song Water into a global hit thus kickstarting her award-winning career.

Over the years, I’ve said the same thing about people who get big jobs and start to feel themselves. What they do with that positional power (symbolic capital) determines what happens after the job is gone. Power can be squandered just like money (economic capital) and motion (algorithmic capital) get squandered.

Now back to The Breakfast Club convo that got us here, I was speaking from as a fan, not from the perspective of a former YouTube employee. I watch a lot of YouTube so I know what I’m talking about! They had so much motion on my algorithm. All I had to do was turn on my TV, click the YouTube logo, and boom there it was: the newest thumbnail of their newest interview. It didn’t matter who they were interviewing or if I ever heard of that person, I just watched it off the strength. It was literally always on the front page of my recommendations. It was a staple in my rotation.

Even moments like Birdman walking out on The Breakfast Club, it didn’t just go viral once, it resurfaced in reaction videos, re-enactments, as a topic on other interviews. Now, when I go on Netflix to watch

The Breakfast Club, I gotta scroll through dramas, documentaries, thrillers and “bingeworthy TV shows” to even get to their shelf and then it’s like a stressful list of episodes to choose from. I’m just trying to chill. I don’t need the stress. Can’t wait for them to come back to YouTube. In the meantime, my other favorite podcasts/ interview shows are getting the front-door delivery privilege that comes with algorithmic capital on my big screen.