Perfection - Vincenzo Latronico
A few years ago I read “ Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the Age of show business” by Neil Postman. I vaguely remember a point about us, the citizens, being bombarded by factoids and/or news devoid of any contextual relevance. He hypothesized about the impact of this new experience on our ability to think critically. He emphasized the importance of context in understanding information.
“Words cannot guarantee their truth content. Rather, they assemble a context in which the question, Is this true or false? is relevant. In the 1890’s that context was shattered, first by the massive intrusion of illustrations and photographs, then by the non propositional use of language.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the Age of show business”
Postman is likely the reason I do not own a TV. He has convinced me of the negative impacts of prolonged exposure to random data. It encourages a disregard for basic understanding of one's reality. We get used to not knowing what is going on.
"Les prolétaires ne sont pas des gens nécessairement pauvres, ce sont des gens qui ne comprennent plus rien".
― Bernard Stiegler
Since then, our (my) consumption of content has evolved into 10s videos. Tiktok may have popularized the genre but all major platforms are following suit. Linkedin, youtube, instagram and even linkedin learning are offering micro content for daily consumption. As I have discovered today, linkedin learning offers 1 min videos for micro learning and maintains a streak to keep you coming back for more. The videos are not tied to a particular subject. They are reproducing a feed to keep eyes on a screen.
A few months ago, I listened to “Filter world: How algorithms have flattened culture” by Kyle Chayka. The author considers the impact of globalized entertainment practices. Our main source of entertainment has become ourselves. We amuse each other on social media. We are constantly, willingly, exposed to decontextualized information, from ourselves and the world, delivered via algorithmic feeds. I imagine that in Postman’s world, at least news anchors, by their presence on the screen, provided some continuity even if their words were irrelevant to their audiences' lives.
“What would I really miss if I didn’t see a dozen photos of a friend’s vacation, or the latest reviews of hyped-up novels, or which viral arguments were dominating Twitter at a particular moment? In the context of my day-to-day, physical life, these bits of content had almost no impact. I feared the loss of some connection, but that connection is, after all, more ambient and less direct than chatting with neighbors when I walk my dog.”― Kyle Chayka, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
A few weeks ago, I finished reading “Perfection” by Vincenzo Latronico. I have given the book 4 stars. It was a good read but did not leave a strong impression upon closure. I had underestimated the book's lingering effects.
“ Perfection” is about the lives of two expats in Berlin. The perfect millennial couple that grew up with the internet of community. They have lived through the 90s golden era of the internet Chayka described in his book. They have witnessed the birth of algorithms on all of our social media apps. They have slowly but surely followed the algorithms from myspace to tiktok. I have been there as well.This is what the synopsis says. Except this is not what we are looking at. The book is less about the lives they are living and more about how lives such as theirs have come to exist. The story provides what is missing for most of our shared digital lives: Context. The book is a frame within which you can understand how they, we, I have become all these similar selves over time.
“Their intellectual horizon was therefore largely formed from headlines in the Guardian or the New York Times, which happened to be the same newspapers their Greek, Dutch and Belgian friends read. In their world, Barack Obama’s speeches and high school shootings existed far more vividly than the laws passed just a few U-Bahn stations away, or the refugees drowning two hours’ flight south.”
― Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection
The protagonists are around my age and live in a major metropolitan city, Berlin. Framing their lives and reactions to the changing world around them offered me so much language to articulate my own feelings about living in Toronto now, in 2025. The book did what fiction does best. It offered an intimate account which made me feel what many cultural theorists have tried to explain. This book felt like the end of a thread I want to believe I have been following for years.
The language is accessible. The sentences are clean. The atmosphere is intimate without being voyeurist. For the duration of your reading,it suddenly makes sense.“Perfection” provides the borders needed to get to the core of a certain malaise. It tries to describe a center through the edges of our lives.
It was a pleasure to read and I have now deleted my social media apps.
