Don't Mistake the Algorithm for Personal Taste
The things you love are different to what Netflix, YouTube and TikTok are serving you.
A common thing I say to my mate Chris is, “my YouTube algorithm has been off recently.” He usually agrees, and we try to find ways to ‘freshen things up’ on our feeds.
Likewise, I recently rebooted my TikTok because I was bored of the videos they kept serving up. It’s easy to forget that things never used to be this way.
When I was a teenager, I was actively hunting for things that spoke to me:
I’d have cassettes lined up ready to hit record as soon as a good song came on the radio.
I’d spend HOURS in the video store, trying to figure out what movie to watch.
I’d go see my favourite bands, my friends favourite bands, and bands I’d never heard of.
Of course, we get older, and time gets crunched as you age. You have work commitments, you have your family, and you need to cook dinner. So it’s comforting when you load up Netflix and the personalised algorithm tells you what you want to watch.
However, the Netflix algorithm doesn’t actually know you. It knows you’ve spent the last two years obsessing over true crime dramas, and it knows you have a little penchant for rom-coms.
But the algorithm doesn’t know that you spent your teens obsessing over every Denzel Washington film. It doesn’t know that you like quirky obscure documentaries. It doesn’t know you once had a huge crush on Elisabeth Shue.
The algorithm is useful, especially on a cold Tuesday when your brain doesn’t have the energy to make any decisions.
But don’t for a second think this algorithm actually knows you.
That’s why I still have DVDs. I hardly ever watch them, but I can stare at those lovely cases and remember who I am. Remember where I’ve come from. There’s a lifetime of personal likes and loves on that shelf.
And of course, the Netflix/Prime/Disney algorithm can only offer you the stuff they can offer you. You might start the evening wanting to see a Tom Hanks flick, but when you search for him on Netflix they only have the rights to three movies.
You might start the evening wanting a Hanks movie, but you end up watching a documentary about a serial killer from Minneapolis because that’s all Netflix can think to offer you.
Our brains work on habit. What we did yesterday, we do today. We used to be wired differently, we were hunters, on the search for great movies and TV. Now we’re passive, waiting to be offered something worthy of our attention.
Don’t even get me started on TikTok.
I enjoy TikTok, I publish content there. But once you’re in the doomscroll, your whole day vanishes. You look up from the screen and you find out your three month old baby is now thirty-two and living with a fitness instructor.
TikTok will get to know you. It’ll find out that you like Tom Hanks movies, that you pay attention when a nutrition guru tells you to eat more vegetables, and you pause a moment too long when Sydney Sweeney or Ryan Gosling appear in a video.
But it doesn’t know what makes your heart sing.
It doesn’t know that a certain temperature in Spring reminds you of your grandmother. It doesn’t know that after you watch a gritty crime drama you desperately need an episode of Gilmore Girls. It doesn’t know that deep down, all you want is to sit on a balcony somewhere and read old Roald Dahl novels.
The algorithm is clever. It’s built to hook you. But it doesn’t care about who you really are.
Wow!