A locally-built app is trying to pull the city’s cultural life out of the global feed and into something human-curated. The idea is overdue. Whether the city shows up is the open question.

Every Cape Town musician knows the maths. You have a show. You try to think of a clever, unique, ‘authentic’ post that will cut through the algorithm. You post it. Then, to guarantee that people  actually see the post on the platform where you built your following, you pay. And the audience you are paying to reach sits inside a feed that also wants to show them, in Benji Anstey‘s words, “American bands, British comedians, Japanese politicians, and the world more broadly.”