Defaults and Taste

This morning before work I read Wiwi’s Default. I deeply resonated with it, and wanted to talk a bit more about some recent thoughts.

When everyone is still unsure of “what is actually supposed to be done right now,” if just one person steps up and demonstrates “you can do it this way,” that behavior is very likely to be treated as the “default.” …Once it has been set, it is extremely hard to change. Wiwi

I also really liked the examples in the article. I’m currently living in Fukuoka, and there are many signs in the subway saying you can stand side by side in two rows, and not to walk on escalators. In Fukuoka, people mostly keep left (most of Japan does; Osaka is the exception, where people keep right).

Even though there are constant reminders that two rows side by side are fine, people still unconsciously leave the other side empty. Although, thanks to strong official promotion, I’ve noticed more and more cases of two-row standing lately, most people still leave the right side empty.

I also often feel some invisible pressure when I stand on the right. No one has ever urged me, but I have heard people behind me click their tongues. Tokyo is even more intense: at large stations, if you don’t leave one side empty and the crowd gets stuck, the pressure becomes even greater. In fact, even on single-person escalators where leaving one side empty isn’t really possible, people still go all out and just treat them like stairs.

Another thing is SEO. At the beginning of 2025, my blog was bizarrely de-ranked by Google, and its index was removed.

At the same time, in order to share my life and observations in Japan, I also launched 日名遊實, written in a more practical, information-sharing style.

日名遊實 | 一起探索最真實的日本 日名遊實是由愷開設立的部落格，致力於撰寫日本大小事，並揉合自己的觀點把我看到的日本呈現給讀者 日名遊實 | 一起探索最真實的日本

As a result, some articles that I thought were very helpful didn’t get much SEO traffic or ranking at all, while one article that was simply a list of Japan’s market-cap rankings got the most exposure. That article just listed the market-cap rankings. SEO’s original purpose is to find the articles most useful to readers, so I suppose that makes sense too.

An article that is most helpful to readers is not necessarily a good article. It’s just that when I see so many AI-generated content farms occupying the top SEO spots, it feels a bit regrettable. How did the internet environment become one that rewards these people?

I’m not against using AI. It’s just that when I see obvious AI-ness coming through, with no editing or refinement, stuffed with keywords to steal rankings, and opening to a flood of doorway ads and long-winded text, it really is just like Wiwi said — a default. Once everyone does it that way, it becomes very hard to correct.

Lately I’ve been reading a book called Flat Era, which talks about how algorithms affect our culture and taste.

The book mentions Voltaire’s definition of taste: “To be a person of taste, it is not enough merely to be able to see beauty in a work and understand where that beauty lies. You must be able to feel beauty and be moved by it. And even that is not enough—not merely to feel something and be moved without understanding why. You must be able to distinguish the subtle differences among various sensations.”

I think this is the closest thing I’ve seen recently to my own view of taste. You can feel what is good, and you can explain clearly why it is good—that is taste.

Besides running a blog, I’m also trying to make short videos. Because I know my current state of life doesn’t have enough energy for long-form video. But every time I make a short video, I end up thinking about how to cater to the audience and create content people will like—background music, titles, subtitles. The more content filtered by algorithms, the more homogeneous it becomes, and the less interesting it gets.

Still, when I try new things, rather than saying from the start that it’s bad, I think it’s cooler to do it first and then criticize it for being bad afterward. For example, I think people who graduate from NTU, finish their master’s and PhD, and then say studying is useless are cool; I think people who make 100 YouTube videos and then tell everyone to escape YouTube are cool; I think people who use AI coding to build ten products and then say “product alone is useless” are cool.

I’ve gone a bit off topic, but anyway, I also want to continue the spirit of setting defaults!