I’m sure I could find a long list of evidence and science-backed studies were I to start digging into the rabbit hole of targeted manipulation, but what we read and watch and hear and feel almost definitely corrupts and influences us.

It is the whole basis of the advertising industry, after all, isn’t it?

Taking that as read, I was sitting here feeling glum about something I saw online: See, the algorithm, as we understand it is designed to do, subtly pushes us into sinkholes of content that bolster and affirm the ideas we already have swirling around in our heads, and whatever algorithm that has been assigned to me seemed to be working overtime and in increasingly-subtler ways.

A little reminder of my backstory: just over three years ago I parachuted out of a stable government IT job into semi-retirement and self-employment. The plan was to do some contracts, take on temp jobs, and fill the rest of my time with creative pursuits.

Right after I quit, the algorithm had picked up on my life plan and had decided to kick me in the tender parts: my feed seemed suddenly cluttered with office work commentary that didn’t outright scold me for changing my path, but definitely had the theme of “you made the wrong decision and cubicles are actually pretty great tho, huh?” 

I resisted. 

But every six months or so, those same feelings come back into my skull and I need to consciously look at the kind of content the algorithm has been throwing my direction.

Without fail it has once again, albeit subtly, shifted my content towards the pro-wage-work-themed stuff. 

This last week (as I write this) has been one of those resurgences, and my own personal employment mindset and professional demons aside, I find myself curiously examining the meta-idea here—and reminding all my readers, too—that behind the scenes an automated system is almost certainly working hard to shift your psychological state in one way or another.

Let that sink in.