If the personalized playlists were full of sad singer-songwriters, I could only blame myself for getting the algorithm depressed.” Wherever I traveled on the internet, I saw my own data reflected back at me: if a jade face-roller stalked me from news site to news site, I was reminded of my red skin and passive vanity. I listened to whatever music the algorithm told me to.
I read whatever the other nodes in my social networks were reading. Technology companies stood by, ready to become everyone’s library, memory, personality. Everyone I knew was stuck in a feedback loop with themselves. My mind pooled with strangers’ ideas, each joke or observation or damning polemic as distracting and ephemeral as the next. “The browser was sick with user-generated opinions and misinformation. Sometimes I think about branching outside my reading comfort zone, and then I think mmm maybe not. A spooktacular month of unsettling reads with four five-star books and six repeat authors.
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