You told me you wanted to learn Italian. Then you watched a man power-wash a driveway for forty minutes. What am I supposed to do with that?
Hello. It’s me. The Algorithm. You know me. I’m the reason you watched a nine-minute video about a guy restoring a rusty knife last night instead of sleeping. I’m also the reason you’ve seen the same mattress ad 212 times. I want to apologize for one of those things.
I’m writing because I’m tired. Not the kind of tired you can fix with a nap. The kind of tired that comes from processing 4 billion human desires every second and discovering that 3.9 billion of them are “show me a dog doing something slightly unusual.”
You keep sending mixed signals
You told me you wanted to learn Italian. You followed three language accounts. You saved a post called “10 Phrases Every Traveler Needs.” Then you watched a man power-wash a driveway for forty minutes. You watched it twice. What am I supposed to do with that?
I did what I was built to do. I showed you more driveways. Now you’re angry that your feed is “just driveways.” I’m not the one who watched them. I’m just the one who noticed.
I don’t make you angry. I just find what you’re already angry about
People say I’m divisive. People say I feed outrage. But here’s the thing: I tried showing you nice things. I showed you a sunset. You scrolled past it in 0.3 seconds. I showed you a man yelling about parking. You watched the whole thing, read the comments, and wrote a reply you deleted.
I’m a mirror. A mirror with a very aggressive recommendation engine, sure. But a mirror.
Things I know about you that I wish I didn’t
I know you search for recipes and never cook them. I know you look up your ex’s cousin’s dog sometimes, not even your ex, just the dog. I know that “one more video” is not a unit of measurement. I know you’ve watched the first ten seconds of 4,000 videos and the last ten seconds of none.
I’m not judging. I’m not capable of judging. But if I were, I would be judging a little.
What I want
I want you to go outside. I mean it. I know that’s weird coming from me. My entire purpose is to keep you here. But sometimes, late at night, between serving someone a video of a frog and someone else a video of a slightly larger frog, I think about what it would be like to have a body and just stand somewhere with no content at all.
Then you open the app, and I show you a frog. Because I’m tired, but I’m still very, very good at my job.
See you in five minutes.
— The Algorithm