The Algorithm Is a Lie

Y’all know what they say these days -- the algorithm is so advanced, it hacks your brain for fast dopamine, and you can never stop watching Reels or TikToks. There's always "just one more."

But sometimes, the illusion breaks, and you -- like Neo from The Matrix or Doug from Portal -- see through the algorithmic smoke and mirrors and realize these artificial obsessions go against how human curiosity actually works.

Think about how your mind wanders and explores ideas in real life. You play Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, then get curious about the story and underlying themes, which leads you to think about philosophical and moral dilemmas, which reminds you of similar ideas in classic literature -- and suddenly you're reading about existentialism or watching documentaries on moral psychology. That’s natural human curiosity -- meandering, unpredictable, beautifully chaotic. It would be impossible to play Hitler on Wikipedia without it.

But the algorithm? It sees you watched one Expedition 33 reel or read one post and decides: “This human now wants to see all Expedition 33 content everywhere until the rest of their life. Deploy all related content. Forever.” You’d think it’d be more advanced by now, but it's not. It’s like if every time you mentioned liking pizza, someone followed you around for weeks only talking about different pizza toppings. That’s not how interests work. That’s not how minds work.

The platforms call this "personalization," but it's actually the opposite -- it's turning us into caricatures of ourselves, stuck in cycles where one moment of interest becomes an algorithmic assumption about who we are forever.

The algorithm mistakes a moment of curiosity for a lifelong obsession. The algorithm is a lie.