Recommended for you
It's easy to feel like we're all living inside an algorithm, our lives curated for us by endless suggestions. But in the end, there's no doubt who knows you best.
I turned the radio on in my car the other day for the first time in a week, ready for whatever surprises were in store.
At a time when we can dictate our own playlist of pretty much anything, anytime, there are still times when I want someone else to just make the decision for me.
Pressing a random preset on the radio — most of which are tuned to the top-40 pop stations our kids enjoy — I stopped at a song from the past that was already about halfway through.
“Inside Out” by Eve 6, which I re-learned upon review came out in 1998 when I was 21, was playing. It was immediately familiar from a half-lifetime ago … and from more recently.
It was a relative hit a quarter-century ago, going as high as No. 28 on the Billboard Top 100. But I’m not sure it was enough of a hit to match the frequency with which I still hear it.
It’s catchy. When I hear it, which seems like every few months or so, I don’t turn it off. And I sing along.
But I have come to the conclusion that it is no accident. This song is part of what at times feels like the elaborate algorithm of my life — the sort of tailored choice that seems novel but is actually being delivered and made for me in a deliberate way.
Far from a conspiracy theory, this is our reality: Our day-to-day lives offer a series of “recommended for you” choices.
Many are far more blatant than a theory that a 1998 song is designed to appeal to a 47-year-old driving at an off-peak time (around 12:45 p.m. on a Thursday), and that song will keep him from switching to another station. (It worked: I listened to Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Paradise City” and Green Day’s “Basket Case” before I pulled into my garage, summoning all the lyrics from one of my brain’s deepest reservoirs).
Amazon is constantly recommending products or books based on things I’ve already bought. Spotify adds “similar” songs to my selective playlists. Netflix is only too happy to tell us what we want to watch next. Social media is increasingly trying to curate our feeds with “for you” tabs instead of letting us just decide what we want to see.
Aren’t they usually right?
In a sense, yes. They have impeccable data based on millions (billions?) of other user experiences and, perhaps more importantly, choices we have already made.
There are themes to pull from. Beats, chords, sounds of music. They know how old we are — if not explicitly with our consent, then at least a good guess based on our purchases and tastes.
I vaguely refer these as “the algorithms” while waving my hands around. I only have a rudimentary understanding of how it works, even if it has a profound impact on how I live (my default setting for a lot of things as I age into our fast-changing world).
They almost seem to know us better than we do, and folks — spoiler alert — advanced artificial intelligence is only going to intensify this sentiment.
But I hate the feeling that my tastes are being curated, even if on some level it’s impossible to escape.
And as I see it, the two biggest challenges with the “recommended for you” lives we are living are these:
They make a prediction about your future based on your past. That keeps you trapped on a path of limited growth. Even if your tastes change as you evolve through a process of personal evolution, you’ll be bogged down by similar and familiar ideas — comforting, sure, but not entirely useful. If you only keep watching, listening to and reading the next recommendation, you aren’t really stepping out and challenging your assumptions.
The recommendations are based on things you have already consumed, but they also contain a heap of data culled from people who aren’t you. Those people might have similar tastes in some things, but is this collective wisdom really the best predictor of what you really want?
Now, this might bother me more than it bothers you. I get actively upset when I end up liking a song Spotify randomly adds to a playlist, for instance, instead of giving in to the joy that comes from appreciating something new.
But I like to think this is a different sentiment than my old self obsessing about “undiscovered” indie bands, for instance, and actively disliking anything mainstream.
(Also pulled from my my memory: A conversation with a friend when that Eve 6 came out, whereby I wondered if it was OK to like something that seemed so blatantly designed for commercial appeal. His advice at the time: Just like what you like and stop worrying about it).
I’m far less preoccupied with commercialism and “selling out” these days. I have no problem liking something mainstream now — as long as I feel like I came to my appreciation of it in a more organic fashion.
Don’t tell me what to like. I’ll decide what I like!
And yes, all of that is a construct of sorts. I don’t find books to read by throwing 100 of them in the air and choosing one randomly. Someone has to do a certain amount of work to get a product or a creative work in front of me.
I guess what I’m constantly in search of are novel experiences. Being the master of your fate and finding genuine surprises aren’t easy these days. They take intention.
What it comes down to is this: You know yourself best.
Ironically enough, as I’m writing this I’m listening to a seemingly random YouTube playlist and “Dead End Friends” by Them Crooked Vultures just came on.
That’s a song Spotify recommended to me — that I grudgingly agreed was a banger — and it seems as though I’ve played it enough on YouTube that it found its way into a series of songs even though I only intended to listen to one song.
I started out listening to “Garter Snake” by Macie Stewart, a song I first heard on the college radio station (Radio K) at the University of Minnesota and which by now I’m probably a few hundred of its 10,000 YouTube plays.
Since around the same time “Inside Out” started playing in heavy rotation, Radio K has been my go-to station when I turn on the radio and I’m serious about seeking out a surprise. Most of the songs they play I’m hearing for the first time, a true spin of the wheel.
On Thursday, I started there. The song was too slow and sad, so I impetuously hit a button that brought me to Eve 6.
It’s a good song. I hold no grudges against it.
But the feeling that life is no more than a connected series of the next recommendations?
Rendezvous, then I’m through with you.