Algorithmic Shame: When the Feed Knows You Better Than You’d Like

I remember watching the TikTok founder explain that the algorithm is simple math. Just clean logic. Pattern recognition. A machine that learns by watching what you watch. Nothing personal—until it is.

If it’s just math, I thought, surely I can outsmart it. Trick the pattern, sidestep the formula. Keep it at arm’s length.

I fed it what I wanted it to believe about me: Andy Samberg, Nick Kroll, Adam Sandler, chaotic SNL sketches. A digital diet of absurdity and laughter. I thought if I trained the feed right, I could keep it shallow. Keep it funny. Keep it safe.

I’ve always been a little Ron Swanson about it. The kind of person who throws out a computer if it gets too close. I love tech—I work in tech—but I also want to sip mimosas on a nameless beach, in a town where no one knows me. And for a while, the algorithm respected that. For a while, I lived in a little curated bubble of comedy chaos.

But math is relentless. It waits. It watches. It sees the gaps between what you consume and what you avoid. And then one day, quietly, it finds the pattern you didn’t mean to leave behind.

Because math isn’t just numbers. Math is memory. Math is confession. Math is what Ian Stewart called the science of patterns, and—

“Nature exploits just about every pattern there is.”

And so does your For You page.

The shift was quiet. Almost imperceptible. One day, my feed still made me laugh. The next, it made me look inward. Videos about freeze responses. ADHD masking. Fear of abandonment. Attachment theory. Some of it didn’t land. But some of it… did. And I didn’t like how easily it named the things I hadn’t even admitted to myself.

Part of me knew this could just be the Forer effect—broad, vague statements that feel piercingly accurate just because we want to feel understood. But still, in that moment, it felt like the algorithm saw something in me I hadn’t. Like it had clocked a pattern I didn’t know I was living. It felt invasive. It felt personal. It felt real.

I didn’t want a mirror. I wanted memes.

So I did what any sane person would do—I panicked and went back to Netflix. At least Netflix gently suggests shows based on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and doesn’t try to therapize me in between mouthfuls of dinner.

Don’t get me wrong—this isn’t an anti-tech manifesto. I am tech. I build the very things I now side-eye. And honestly? I’m constantly amazed by what we’ve created. I learned to cook because of TikTok. I’ve built my reading list through Bookstagram. I’ve seen people find answers, diagnoses, language for pain they never knew how to name.

We are the first generation with this much access. This much collective wisdom. Our mothers had to rely on stingy neighbours for recipes. I get lemon garlic chicken in 3 swipes, a voiceover, and a soundtrack.

We joke that our parents should’ve been the ones in therapy, and maybe they should’ve—but they didn’t have the internet dissecting their trauma in 15-second videos. They didn’t have a digital village whispering diagnosis, healing, inner child, shadow work, and reparenting into their ears.

But still—something in me recoils.

Because when the feed recognizes something in you before you do, when it sees your sadness before you’ve spoken it aloud… it stops being a tool. It starts being a mirror. And not everyone is ready to see their reflection.

Sometimes it offers relief. Sometimes it feels like surveillance. And sometimes, it feels like both.

The real question is—what happens when that relief becomes a crutch?

When we stop reaching out to people because the algorithm already gets us? When the feed feels safer than a friend’s question, when it never misreads our tone or forgets what we like, when it never disagrees or interrupts?

It’s not an obligation. It’s not an argument. It’s just… always there.

But it isn’t real.

I have friends who know fragments of me. But there are two—two rare ones—who know me in full. We can read each other’s silences. We know the difference between “I’m fine” and “I’m breaking.” Not because of prompts or notifications. But because we’ve paid attention. Over time. Through presence.

And that’s what I fear we’re outsourcing.

We're already a lonely society. And the deeper our connection with technology, the more we're tempted to believe it can substitute the real thing.

It starts small. A safe feed. A comforting playlist. An AI boyfriend who doesn’t argue, doesn’t flake, doesn’t disappoint.

But even the perfect AI boyfriend can’t be a man in finance, 6’5, trust fund, blue eyes. (And maybe that’s the joke. Or maybe it’s the prophecy.)

I don’t have an answer. But I know this: being known is not the same as being loved. Algorithms know us. They don’t love us. And as much as they mirror us, heal us, soothe us—they can never hold us.

We were never meant to be seen only by the math. We were meant to be seen by each other.

Disclaimer: You do you.

P.S. This was a rant I wrote in 2022 when I came across that video and my mentor told me to write all my thoughts down in hoped of an idea.