Spotify Wrapped, TikTok—Maybe the Algorithms Are Losing Touch

Wrapped has ceased being about one person’s surprising listening habits and more about nebulous shifts in vibe. Yes, lots of people listened to Chappell Roan and Kendrick Lamar this year. Is anyone the least bit stunned?

But this isn’t even just a Spotify issue. Lots of platforms now offer year-in-review wrap-ups, and nearly all of them feel like a collective shrug. Over on TikTok, the company touted that its users were very interested in being demure, very into Moo Deng. Yeah, no kidding. These revelations are about as shocking as the fact that there were 1.2 million BookTok posts in the first 10 months of the year, something anyone who has ever opened the app could probably tell you is a big part of the platform.

Reading its annual report, I was reminded that, perhaps, TikTok’s algorithm has gotten too good at pointing people in the direction of sure-fire hits and less good at loading FYPs with videos people will find incredibly inventive or fascinating.

In other unsurprising news, horniness was big on Grindr this year. The hookup app’s Unwrapped report also named Charli XCX as Mother of the Year and found that the Sex Position of the Year was missionary. Actually, maybe that is surprising. For Grindr, at least.

My final thought, though, comes from a year-end mainstay that (I don’t think) is algorithmically based: Oxford University Press’ Word of the Year. Determined by popular vote, input from experts, and, as Oxford Languages president Casper Grathwohl told The New York Times, a little bit of “dark art,” this year’s word is … drumroll … “brain rot.” Er, you know, the degeneration that comes from too much time looking at dumb stuff online.

The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to TikTok.

First, yes, that’s two words. Second, other people also noticed this discrepancy, proving that maybe all of the internet’s beloved year-end traditions are feeling the heat of social media scrutiny this year. “Brain rot” also beat out “demure” and “romantasy,” the frequent BookTok topic. So, ultimately, maybe algorithms did impact this one, too, just not in the way you might expect. Maybe the real brain rot was all the decisions we made along the way.