When Identity Becomes the Remote Control

America loves categories. We invented the filing cabinet, the “medium” soda, and the comforting lie that if you put a label on something, you’ve understood it. So it’s only fitting that modern entertainment has embraced our national pastime: sorting human beings into neat little bins—now with a glossy user interface and autoplay.

Streaming platforms used to organize shows by what they are: comedy, drama, thriller, documentary. You know, genre. The thing that tells you whether you’ll laugh, cry, or spend eight hours “relaxing” by watching Scandinavian detectives interrogate fog. Now we increasingly organize by who we think the audience is: Black Stories, Asian Voices, Latinx Spotlight, Pride Picks. Identity first, story second—because nothing says “unity” like a digital seating chart.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way before someone faints into their brand-safe pillow: stories about race, ethnicity, and sexuality matter. Spotlighting creators who were historically shut out is not the problem. The problem is when identity becomes the main map of culture, not a helpful index. When the front door to entertainment is “Pick your demographic,” we’ve turned inclusion into a checkout lane.

And yes, it’s usually sold as progress. “We’re elevating voices,” the industry says, elevating them directly onto a carousel between “Because You Watched One Thing Once” and “Sponsored Content That Swears It’s Not Sponsored.” It’s the same old marketing move with a fresh coat of moral varnish: separate the audience, target the audience, monetize the audience. Congratulations, we have reinvented “separate but equal” as “separate but curated.”

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: identity categories are a data strategy wearing a sensitivity pin. When a platform clusters content under “Black Stories,” it’s not just helping you find art; it’s helping advertisers find you. It’s a demographic funnel. It’s “community” as a billing code. Because advertisers don’t buy “good television.” They buy predictable eyeballs. They buy “people who might argue about this show online,” then sell those arguments back to everyone as “engagement.”

And don’t pretend the algorithm isn’t in on it. The algorithm is the most judgmental roommate you’ve ever had. Click one identity hub and it decides that’s your entire personality. Watch a Pride row once and suddenly every recommendation is either a coming‑out montage or a “bold” reboot where the spaceship is inclusive but the dialogue is still recycled. Watch one “heritage month” collection and the platform treats you like a walking focus group forever.

This is how division gets quietly reinforced. Not with hooded villains twirling mustaches, but with dropdown menus and “for you” rails. When identity is the primary organizing principle, it trains us to approach culture like team sports: ours versus theirs, representation versus “agenda,” whose pain “counts,” whose joy is “universal.” It makes every cast list feel like a political argument before you’ve even hit play. And once you frame art as tribal property, you can sell tribal outrage like it’s a subscription bundle.

The political incentives are obvious. A divided audience is a useful audience. Useful audiences are easier to mobilize, easier to scare, easier to fleece. If you can keep people thinking in identity blocks, you can keep them reacting in identity blocks. Meanwhile, the same media ecosystem that profits from the fight sells you the fight, then sells you “healing content” afterward. It’s like setting your house on fire and charging you for the water—monthly.

The artistic cost is real too. When a romantic comedy starring Black leads becomes “Black content” instead of “a romantic comedy,” it gets burdened with extra homework. It has to represent, educate, heal, and litigate before it’s allowed to be funny. When a queer mystery becomes “LGBTQ+” instead of “a mystery,” the story is forced to carry a banner when it just wanted to carry a twist. Identity becomes a genre, which is a lazy way of saying “this is not for everyone,” even when it absolutely could be.

Real integration would look simpler and braver: lead with genre and subject, then let identity be optional metadata—filters you can use, not gates you’re herded behind. Put “Thrillers,” “Sitcoms,” “Documentaries,” and “Animation” up front, and let people discover creators across the whole landscape like normal humans with varied tastes.

Because America’s actual genre is ensemble: messy, contradictory, loud, and constantly arguing in the kitchen while still passing the potatoes. If entertainment keeps insisting we sort ourselves before we watch, we’ll keep rehearsing the idea that our differences are the main event—when they should be part of the cast, not the entire plot.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Article 107 News has just received breaking information from the near future: the next “inclusion initiative” will come with a coupon code.

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— Tammy Pondsmith is a Senior Correspondent at Article 107 News, and the only journalist banned from three streaming services for attempting to categorize executives by moral fiber and streaming them under “Shorts.”

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.