Last Tuesday my YouTube feed served me a 3 hour video on how to organize a junk drawer

I was just trying to watch some workout form checks and suddenly the algorithm decided I needed to see a dude sorting paperclips by size. I mean, I sat there and watched the whole thing because it was oddly hypnotic, but what even triggered that? The day before I looked up a tutorial on fixing a wobbly chair leg, so maybe the AI thinks I'm on some kind of home repair kick now. It got worse though because after that video, my recommendations turned into a loop of extreme couponing and someone restoring a rusty shovel. I spent my entire lunch break watching a guy argue about the best way to fold a fitted sheet. Has the algorithm ever just decided you're a completely different person and thrown you into a rabbit hole you never asked for?

2 comments

2 Comments

wren3075d ago

Is it weird how these algorithms essentially turn us into characters in someone else's story, just based on one accidental click? It feels like the internet has this assumption that everybody has a perfectly consistent identity...one little click on a rusty shovel and suddenly I'm a full-time homesteader prepping for the apocalypse. It really makes you wonder if the machines are just projecting their own desire for order onto our chaotic, random lives.

abby8365d ago

I mean that line about "machines projecting their own desire for order" is kind of hitting me hard @wren307. Do you think these algorithms are actually trying to categorize us because they literally cannot handle the mess of real human behavior? Like maybe it's not even about selling us stuff anymore, it's about the system needing to believe we are predictable so it doesn't break. Because the alternative is admitting that most of us are just clicking around based on boredom or curiosity, not some deep life plan. And that would make all their tracking and sorting pointless, right?