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Lorentzen starts out the article with a passage discussing consumerist culture and how "the algorithm" shapes the things that we consume. Here he raises the shadow of an interesting question: how exactly is consumerist culture and "the algorithm" affecting the identities of people who have built their lives around consumption? Lorentzen points out the ways in which consumerist interactions with culture aren't based around an enjoyment for the material, but rather the ways in which this consumption reinforces the ways we already view ourselves (I'm a busy person, I stay in the loop, etc.).

What made this confusing to me was that Lorentzen seems to veer very sharply away from this course later in the article. His focus becomes not whether or not we can genuinely interact with art through the lens of consumption, but seems to shift instead to people consuming "incorrect" books in an "incorrect" way. Lorentzen points to the ways in which book reviews have been streamlined and "dumbbed down", but he doesn't seem to consider that the ponderous, critical New York Times reviews he loves so much are also a form of consumption. It seems that Lorentzen has just as much of his identity invested in reading the "right" books the "right" way as Alex and Wendy have in watching the best TV shows all their friends enjoy. His criticism then isn't of consumerist culture and the formulation of identities around the things we consume, but rather a call for a change to a different kind of consumerism.