My new job involves 8+ hours of screen time and scrolling through my boss’s feed to prepare for pitch meetings. And let me tell you, after stepping into another woman’s screen, I’m realizing that despite being close in age, gender, and ethnicity, we do not live on the same internet at all. My entire timeline was decay and destruction while hers was pomp and product. Both are not great, especially not when partnered up. After all, what do we create together if we’re never even looking at the same problems? And now during the few moments a week where I’m walking amongst strangers, I can’t help but wonder the same thing about everyone around me.
It’s become clear that I don’t just have an Algorithm Brain, I have Algorithm Life. Most of us do. And that’s what I want to talk about today, navigating the fine line between online community and digital tribalism in a way that could greatly improve our offline lives. Or at least mine.
Algorithm Life: The morphing of your digital and physical spaces to form one, indistinguishable identity and social network.
Signs you’re suffering from a chronic case of Algorithm Life:
You have a job that would allow you to never meet a single new person ever again.
You keep running into people from your FYP in the wild.
You’re finally noticing that the friend you always thought was a comedic genius has plagiarized every last joke and intelligent thought from a TikTok comment section.
Everything out of your mouth sounds like a graduate-level thesis statement defending the least important talking point thing that’s ever existed. (the kindest people are ones with less friends, the color red will make people respect you, you’ll make more money in pigtails than any other hairstyle because all men are pedophiles, any girl who’s too nice to you when you meet is just trying to fuck your man or ruin your life, )
Things that used to be silly little internet jokes about how men are too unsafe to be allowed inside, have now become actual opinions and fears that you bring with you on every first date.
You’re afraid of or disgusted by so many more things than you used to be.
You can’t help but think and speak in extremes because your primary third space is one that prioritizes garnering attention to sell you raw moldavite or trauma journals, over building actual, productive, or peaceful community.
Despite digitally communicating with more people on a daily basis than your grandmother would’ve in her entire lifetime, you still feel lonelier than ever before.
NYC & the internet both built their reputations on a promise that the exiled, no matter how hated in their birth-designated environments, could come here for a better life as long as they were A) hard workers or B) naturally hot and cool, or funny. Guaranteed community for social pariahs as long as you put the work in and were neglected somewhere else, that was the rule. And now despite being the most diverse places in the world, New York & the Internet are also some of the most segregated.
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