Listen, I clicked one article — one — about something I genuinely cared about. Within 48 hours, my newsfeed had decided exactly who I was, what I was afraid of (or what I should be afraid of), and which strangers on the internet need lobotomies. The algorithm didn’t ask if it could be my therapist or even fake life coach. It never does. No, the algorithm, for all of us, just quietly builds a funhouse mirror version of us and the world and drive ad traffic that convinces me that yes, butt pads look like I good idea.
Y’all, I don’t need butt pads but the algorithm is a shady b**ch.
It happens slowly, like a slow boil. First, you click one article or spend too much time lingering on that “no ads in game” …ad. Then the algorithm, bless its cold little heart, decides it knows exactly who you are now. Within a week, your feed is a carefully curated echo chamber designed to make you angrier, more certain, and significantly less interesting at dinner parties.
… and yeah, you have that stupid little game on your phone now.
I’ve watched it happen to people I love. Reasonable, curious, funny humans who slowly became walking talking points. You can see the exact moment it happens — their posts become way more frequent and feisty, their sentences start sounding like they were written by a committee, and suddenly every conversation is a recruitment pitch or threat on how if you don’t agree with them to just go ahead and unfollow them.
And even if you politely disagree, you get blocked.
I get it. Certainty feels good. Belonging to a tribe feels good. Having a ready-made answer for every question feels really good when the world is this loud and this confusing.
But I keep coming back to this: I don’t actually trust anyone — left, right, or center — who isn’t occasionally uncomfortable with their own side. That discomfort is where the thinking happens. That’s where the human stuff lives.
So here I am, stubbornly clicking “not interested” on outrage bait, following people I disagree with who are able to present their views with substance, not at someone else’s expense. I refuse to let an algorithm decide what kind of person I’m becoming and manipulate that transformation.
It’s lonely sometimes, being a mugwump. Nobody’s making yard signs for “it’s complicated.”
But my brain still belongs to me.
At least until they activate the autonomous microbots they gave me in my vaccines… lol.
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