Feed Curation
Feed curation is the practice of deliberately shaping the information and social streams that train attention, judgment, and desire. In E45 孟岩对话李继刚：人何以自处, Li Jigang / 李继刚 describes cutting thousands of WeChat contacts down to a smaller set, watching only a few people’s posts, limiting public accounts and RSS feeds, and using paper books and AI-processed papers as higher-signal inputs.
The episode’s rule is that a lower-level constraint can create higher-level freedom. Restricting the feed looks like less input, but it can create more thinking room, deeper relationships, and more legible memory. Meng Yan / 孟岩 summarizes the point as “your feed is your fate”: the material that repeatedly enters attention becomes part of who the person is becoming.
Feed curation extends Attention Industrialization from critique to practice. If platforms and AI systems can industrialize mental intake, the user needs active input governance rather than relying on willpower after the feed has already been optimized against them.
Key Claims
- A feed is not a neutral stream; it trains what the person notices, wants, fears, and remembers.
- Fewer high-signal inputs can produce more freedom than abundant low-signal inputs.
- Social curation can make people visible again instead of turning contacts into undifferentiated noise.
- Feed design connects to Personal Knowledge Ecology because inputs become notes, questions, memories, and future frames.
- AI-era speed makes feed curation more important because models can multiply whatever input diet the user provides.
Connections
- Attention Industrialization — platform-level problem feed curation responds to.
- AI Use Pacing — practical discipline for limiting AI and information overrun.
- Human Agency Under AI and Wet-State Human Agency — agency requires chosen inputs and protected volition.
- Personal Knowledge Ecology and AI-Assisted Reading — curated inputs feed the user’s knowledge system.
- Flow Environment Design — adjacent method of shaping environment so attention can settle.
- Rumination Vs Reflection — input noise can feed rumination instead of useful thought.