Last Thursday, Madonna played a free show in Times Square. From the onslaught of clips that dominated my Instagram feed that night, I could tell you that it looked like a Pride kickoff, sponsored by Grindr, and a preview of Confessions II, set for release in July, with a couple Confessions on a Dance Floor songs (“Hung Up” and “I Love New York,” obviously) thrown in to hype the crowd. The clipshow came courtesy of influencers, legacy media and fan accounts whose posts quickly overthrew the Euphoria loop that had eclipsed election news earlier in the week.
The Madonna loop was a particularly relentless one, filled with virtually identical videos that bombarded my feed for no less than 24 hours. Even after it subsided, the remnants of Madonna Mania lingered on my For You page as I finished writing this post on Sunday evening. It was overkill, and that’s coming from someone who grew up listening to Madonna, cites Confessions as her best album and intends to get Confessions II on release day.
As the relevance of Madonna’s Times Square show waned, a slew of other pop stars crept into my feed, all clipped for the algorithm. Kylie Minogue. Of course, I might actually follow her. Slayyyter. Sure. I think I follow her too. Addison Rae. Now the algorithm is insulting my tastes. Another Addison Rae. WTF? Do I have to avoid making eye contact with my feed to make this shit stop? Olivia Rodrigo and Robert Smith. Fine for one post, but not three or four, or maybe it was five, in a matter of seconds. I hid my phone before I could fall into a Primavera Sound loop.
Clipping refers specifically to brief snippets of longer videos designed specifically for social media. They’re used in viral marketing campaigns to give the illusion of organic popularity, i.e. you’ll see content from seemingly random accounts that are actually part of clip farms who are paid to promote the content. NPR, The Verge, Vulture and Vox have all reported on this phenomenon and all those stories are good reads for background.
I’m not here to explain why and how clipping is a thing, I’m here to share how infuriating it is to be stuck in an algorithmic loop where clips converge with influencer content and other shit designed to persuade us to buy or do something. In the surge of Madonna posts- the overwhelming majority of which came from accounts I don’t follow- was an update from someone I know IRL. This person was at the Times Square show and shared the sort of post that we used to see often from people we actually follow, a carousel with some stills and some video. In other words, it was a genuine post. Everything else looked like an ad that’s trying not to look like an ad.
If these are all incognito ads, I don’t really get the purpose of serving them to my main feed ad nauseam. I’m not Grindr’s audience. I guess I’m Madonna’s audience, but the new album was already on my radar, so, as an ad, it’s kind of irrelevant, but kind of not. I did mindlessly share one of those clips in my stories, so, theoretically, it might reach people who aren’t aware of Confessions II. I would assume that even the most offline amongst us are aware of Grindr.
But, in the attention economy, brand awareness isn’t enough. Being “part of the conversation” isn’t enough. You have to hijack the conversation. This is what we’re seeing play out in our feeds every day in a battle for pop culture dominance and it comes at the expense of the reality that surrounds us. So, while my main feed is buzzing about a free show happening on the other side of the country, I flip through Stories to see that the people I know IRL were at the Human League and Soft Cell at Hollywood Bowl, Belle and Sebastian at the Palladium, or a host of local shows and club nights across Los Angeles.
It’s easy to write off these algorithmic loops as just a modern inconvenience when we’re talking about pop culture, but it’s also happening in politics. Take the L.A. mayoral race, which, at the time of writing this, is still in progress. The Spencer Bratt Agenda – “L.A. is in decline and people are pissed about the fires and homelessness.”- dominated on social media and seeped into television news.
That became the conversation, not ICE, who people are still protesting, or the cost of living, not the impact of AI and delivery bots, not Metro’s lousy weekend service and virtually non-existent night schedule. When election results began to show that the concerns of actual Angelenos didn’t match up with Republican perceptions of the city, everyone from Kalshi influencers to Megyn Kelly to the clown in the White House pushed election fraud conspiracies. That became the new conversation in spite of all logical arguments to the contrary. The strategy isn’t much different than it is for music, TV shows or anything else, bombard people with content until they have to share and comment.
All this boils down to marketing at its most benign, propaganda at its worst, which isn’t anything new. What is different is that the messages are coming so quickly and in such volume that it’s getting more difficult, and time consuming, to discern what’s genuine and what’s not. Because these messages are overwhelming our feeds, superseding posts from friends, local news and other updates from the accounts we actually chose to follow, it runs a real risk of disconnecting us from our surroundings. This will probably get worse as use of AI grows. So, what do we do? I have no clue. It doesn’t look like there’s a solution other than logging off and that’s no solution.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
Listen to the Beatique Mix for June, 2026, featuring music from Yoko Ono, Scott Walker, Slayyyter, Purple Disco Machine , Madonna and more.
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