When I was younger, my mum brought a baked artichoke to the dining table I was sitting at and told me to try it.
I looked at the alien-looking vegetable in front of me, then looked at my mum, then back at the artichoke as my face contorted in disgust, and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me, Mum. I’m not eating that.” I mean, the thing looked like a rolled-up pangolin. I assumed she had lost the plot, that she must be succumbing to her old age.
So my mum – who was very clearly desperate to diversify my palate – offered me 50p to try it, which I, of course, accepted immediately because, to a pre-cost-of-living-crisis twelve-year-old, 50p was a lot of money.
I went to take a bite, envisioning all the luxuries I would buy with my promised riches if I could endure this one hellish mouthful, and my God, I was obsessed. I had never tasted anything so good in my life.
From then on, every time my mum went to the supermarket, I would beg and plead for her to buy me an artichoke. I imagine she regretted ever offering me that 50p in the first place (karma for trying to bribe a child, I guess)?
Anyway, as it turned out, I seriously loved artichoke. It’s the first experience I remember of someone encouraging me to try what I thought I would hate and that thing turning out to be a lifelong love of mine.
There are a multitude of examples of this happening in my life.
Here’s another, slightly more consequential story (and then I promise I’ll get to the point of how this relates to algorithms):
Soon after I started studying for my A-Levels (which are pre-university qualifications for any non-British readers), I realised I had really messed up. I had chosen to take Classics, which I thought I would love, unaware of how much Latin I would be required to learn (which, on reflection, was kind of stupid of me because, obviously, you would have to learn Latin for a Classics course).
I hated it – it was like the artichoke experience in reverse – so I begged and pleaded with my teachers to change subjects. I had no idea what I wanted to change it to, but I knew I wasn’t making it into university if I didn’t swap it for something – anything – else.
My friend, sensing my panic, suggested I take philosophy instead. “You’ll love it,” she said. “It’s actually really interesting.”
I was sceptical; philosophy sounded a bit abstract to me. But I was running out of time, and I needed to make a decision.
So, I enrolled in her class, which, you guessed it, I absolutely loved. I found philosophy more engaging than any subject I had studied prior. It opened up a new world for me.
Fortunately, I did well in my exams and, without a moment of hesitation, applied to university to study it full time. It has since been one of my most defining interests.
I am forever grateful for that conversation with my friend; it opened up a new world for me.
I’m sure you can remember countless moments like this happening in your own life. A friend insisting you listen to a song you don’t like at the start but ending up playing 100 times after; a family member recommending a book that you pick up out of politeness and end up loving; a teacher making you study a topic that sounds painfully dull and you somehow become completely absorbed in it. And you look back, so glad you were beckoned out of familiarity and into a new realm of interest.
My point is this: it is part of the human experience to discover you were wrong about yourself - and to realise that something you didn’t care for can become one of the great joys of your life.
And what do algorithms do? The things whose sole purpose is to feed you content based on your existing preferences?
They erase that. They say, “here is what you like, and here’s more of it.” It’s literally what they’re manufactured to do. They have no incentive to open new doors and widen your perspective.
In fact, they’re incentivised to do the opposite, because you’re more likely to keep your eyes glued to a screen when you’re consuming easy, familiar content that you already know you like.
This might all sound very dramatic, but it is dramatic. Algorithms are setting us all up to become a blob of one-dimensional preferences, not discovering the things that could have put us on a different path. They are stealing our potential and starving our curiosity. They’re shrinking our worlds, our possibilities – sucking us all into individual vacuums where we’re placated with familiarity.
And the danger isn’t just that algorithms show us more of what we already like. It’s that they train us to expect immediate recognition. If something doesn’t click instantly, we assume it isn’t for us, and we stop developing the patience required for new interests to emerge.
And this is all, of course, because feeding us the stuff they know we already like is a far safer bet than showing us content that we might find confusing or slow, or that requires an ounce of active thinking, when attention is the currency.
But no matter how much it tries to convince you with all its data analysis and pattern spotting that it’s helping you because it knows you so well, your algorithm doesn’t want the best for you. It just wants you, there, doing…nothing.
Now, you might be thinking, my algorithms recommended some pretty interesting stuff to me… maybe take it down a notch.
To which I would say, yes, I should calm down. But then I would say, my point isn’t that algorithms can’t surface good content. It’s that they can’t surface content that isn’t based on some pre-conceived notion of you. Because that would be too risky to monetise.
And the real knife to the throat is that even if you acknowledge that and try to change it, in serving up so much familiarity, algorithms have made us so averse to novelty that trying to engage with something genuinely unfamiliar is difficult. So we click back to something easy and recognisable. And the cycle repeats.
But when a human recommends something to you, they’re not basing it on some elaborate data analysis with the end goal of eliciting a dopamine response. They’re just sharing something they enjoyed. And in doing so, they’re giving you the chance to enjoy it too.
Algorithms aren’t going anywhere, and I’m not saying you need to throw your phone away. The internet isn’t an inherently bad place - it’s actually incredible. I mean, I love the internet; my whole newsletter is about finding and recommending interesting things on it. It’s the greatest library ever built. But it only becomes that when you use it with a bit of intention, and when you let yourself click on things that you don’t quite get at first.
We’re limiting our life’s path by letting our algorithms choose for us. Every time we choose to watch a video that’s chosen by an algorithm over an article that sounds weird or unfamiliar, we’re handing over the chance to learn something new.
Sometimes the most important things you'll ever learn are the things you'd scroll straight past. Every now and then, ignore what the algorithm thinks you'll enjoy…hunt out the weird article and give it a read.
In the spirit of human curation, here is some interesting content on the internet to explore (not based on your previous interests).
Thankfully, youtube has an option to select "new to you" for feed recommendations.