Lose Yourself In the Algo

Why the "For You" page steals a lot more than time & attention

Admittedly, I sound like an alarmist – I may be. But I seriously think we underestimate the impact social media scrolling has on us.

It’s not just hours we’re losing. I think social media feeds slowly erode the inner voice that tells us who we are and what we care about.

And before you X out of this and label me some Doomer bastard, indulge me quickly…

What do I mean by ‘lose yourself’?

The phrase ‘lose yourself’ comes in a few flavors, though they all seem to have a common thread: your sense of self takes a back seat.

It has a positive connotation when we refer to the kind of ‘losing yourself’ that Eminem sang about in his little jingle –

You lose yourself in the music, on the dance floor, in the sex, in the game. You’re so busy doing that you stop overseeing or criticizing or whatever that nagging voice in your head gets up to.

It’s a temporary ego suspension – typically in our control – where that stepping back helps us see things from a wider lens than usual. Which can help us…

• Feel more present in the moment (less in our heads).

• See ourselves as part of a bigger whole.

• Empathize more with others.

• Reset perspective so your problems don’t seem so big.

All positives in my book. But ‘losing yourself’ can also be dark…

…It can look like people-pleasing and over-identifying with others until we’re not quite sure what we really think or believe.

…It can look like disassociation, when we’re so immersed in distraction that it feels like we’re living a simulated life.

…It can look like addiction, where something external has completely hijacked our wants, values, and energy.

Instead of temporary ego-suspension, these ‘negatives’ feel more like an erosion of our identity.

Stress feels like a good metaphor here. Because short bursts of acute stress are actually functional and positive – a helpful evolved response.

But when stress stops being a spike and becomes your baseline – when it becomes chronic – that’s when we break down mentally and physically.

I think “losing yourself” works the same way.

In small doses, it can be restorative. But when numbing out becomes the default, our sense of self begins to blur.

We forget what we actually what, what we actually care about, and who we are when no one’s watching.

The Flow

In his piece Everything Is Television, Derek Thompson breaks down a cultural shift that explains why I connect this all to our social media feed.

He references media theorist Raymond Williams, who argued that before television, media came in discrete chunks – a book, a newspaper, a play. They had clear beginnings and ends.

Television changed that. It introduced what Williams called flow – a seamless, never-ending sequence of images and sounds with absolutely no hard stops.

At the time Williams wrote, the average American household was spending ~7-8 hours per day with their TV on. But they wouldn’t have it on to watch something specific – they would simply have it running, and when something interesting came on, people would gather.

Before TV, media consumption was specific. You opened a specific book. You went to a specific play. You chose a specific record, sat down, and listened.

TV inverted that relationship. It changed the order from:

Deciding “this seems interesting” → Consuming that content (movie/record/book).

to

Consuming the content (TikTok/Instagram/X/LinkedIn) → Deciding “this seems interesting.”

And with algorithm-driven feeds, we no longer even decide what seems interesting. It decides what we find interesting based on how much time we spend watching something, our engagement behavior, and a long list of other predictive metrics that I’m sure would be incredibly disturbing if we knew the extent of it.

It trains us to expect the algorithm to cater to our interests instead of exercising the muscle of noticing, choosing, and deciding what we actually find interesting ourselves.

Cognitive Offloading

It’s clear that the more we rely on GPS, we sort of lose our ability to find our way around without it.

To the point where if someone gave me old school directions – “turn left at the second stop sign after the third gas station” – I think my brain may hit its RAM limit and freeze.

And the same pattern goes for everything:

The more we offload an aspect of our cognition, the more that aspect of our cognition will atrophy.

So the more we rely on the algorithm to cater interesting content for us, and for it to decide what is interesting to us, the more that this part in us will atrophy.

Sort of like it erodes your ‘I like this’ center of the brain.

And it seems naive to think this is accidental. It’s in the best interests of a social media company for you to cognitively offload your intuition to their algorithm.

The evolution of YouTube is a good example of this.

YouTube’s home page once featured new videos from the channels you subscribed to. The people you actively chose to watch.

But that put too much choice into the user’s hands and it gave the creator too much leverage – it wasn’t “I’m going to watch YouTube” it was “I’m going to watch these specific creators who happen to use YouTube for distribution.”

So they changed the home page’s format.

Now, it features videos that YouTube’s algorithm recommends for you, putting the leverage back in YouTube’s hands because:

→ The more you choose what to watch based on recommendations (not based on who you subscribed to), the more you rely on YouTube’s algorithm over your own judgment.

→ The more that people rely on algorithmic-driven recommendations, the more that creators are forced to adapt their content to the algorithm’s preferences in order to be seen.

Does this really matter?

We tend to treat our media consumption as incidental – fluff to fill the gaps between “real” life.

In a society that wants us to define ourselves by our job titles and productivity, our interests are treated as an afterthought.

If you spent two hours scrolling… who cares? You were just relaxing.

But based on the principles above, the more we offload our Choice to the algorithm – the simple act of picking what to look at – the more we’re atrophying our ability to discern our true taste.

And soon the definition of ‘what I like’ goes from:

A 2-hour film that legit re-shaped your perspective on life, and moved you in a way that was viscerally felt for weeks afterward.

to:

Spending 2 hours scrolling through short-form videos of some dude mowing a lawn or power-washing a dirty driveway – they may get a “sooo satisfying” comment… but they’re not doing anything like that movie above.

You are training your brain to stop asking, “Does this move me?” and start asking, “Is this satisfying enough to keep me from being bored?”

I’m going to be dramatic again.

I believe that when we lose the ability to notice what truly moves us, we lose access to the deepest part of ourselves. The part of you that guides you toward your deepest interests, passions, and loves.

Kierkegaard saw despair as not being oneself. It’s the condition you’re in when the inner voice goes quiet, when your choices are outsourced, when the pulling and shaping of your own life is ceded to someone or something else.

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.”

Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

To Kierkegaard, our passions – the things that move us – are our access point to the divine.

Everything else comes from out there. Our passions come from deep within us, in a way that we can’t fake.

I hate horror movies. Yes, I know that’s probably on account of me being a giant pussy – that’s not the point. All I know is that I have a visceral “NO” reaction when watching a horror movie, and it seems like my effort is spent in better places than to fight it.

But I know other people who never had to ‘fight it.’ They simply love horror movies and always have.

They were the kids who would sneak their parents’ horror movie VCRs downstairs for us to watch. I was the one secretly relieved when we got caught while the movie was still in the cheesy opening plotline.

And maybe these passions aren’t as clear cut as “I’m just wired to like this and you’re not.”

Actually, I know this isn’t the case since my own interests and passions have changed so much throughout my life. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I do go through a horror movie phase at one point.

But the point is that right now, in this moment, there is a signal inside me.

We don’t “invent” our tastes; we witness them. I don’t decide to find a specific melody moving or a specific painting profound – I just notice that I do. It’s an internal “Yes” or “No” that comes from a place far deeper than my conscious, thinking mind.

When we let the algorithm take over, we mute that internal voice.

And I think that the more we tell that internal voice to shut up, the quieter it becomes. This is what I mean by ‘losing yourself.’

This isn’t isolated to the social media scrolling, seems like it’s a phenomena that comes up in every aspect of life:

For example, when we turned 21, our weekends quickly went from college house parties to attended overcrowded bars: getting packed in like sardines, exchanging spit with someone whos name escapes you, then waiting way too long to for drinks that are way too expensive.

I knew I hated it from the very beginning. I mean… who wouldn’t?

But I shut that internal voice up in the most reliable way I know how – excessive alcohol intake. I’d get hammered drunk.

Then the next morning, we’d say “that was fun, wasn’t it?” while cherry-picking the few moments of solace throughout the night to focus on to convince myself I enjoyed it.

The more I shut down that internal voice saying “um… can we get out of here?” or “um… I don’t think we actually like this,” the less that voice felt like speaking up.

And who would blame it?

The same thing happens with the algorithm. The less we tune into the voice of “this moves me” or “this repulses me” or “I am bored right now…”

The more we accept a life designed by predictive models.

And while the predictive models may know what holds your attention longest, it can’t know what truly moves you.

So rely on the “For You” page for long enough, and we won’t just lose our afternoon. We’ll lose our compass.

As Kierkegaard famously warned:

“Boredom is the root of all evil—the despairing refusal to be oneself.”

So what’s the opposite of ‘losing yourself’?

I want to clarify a bit what I mean about agency.

It seems to me that we don’t have all that much control in this world – much less than most of us would like. But we clearly do have some control, and I tend to think that little sliver is extremely important.

I resonate with something Liz Gilbert said on the Tim Ferriss Show:

“I believe that I am loved beyond measure by a magnificent, complex, amused God who has given me power over practically nothing. Really, very little that I have control over, but what tiny amount I have control over is extremely important.”

That tiny amount?

It’s deciding “what do I care about?” based on a deep inner knowing – not letting external incentives choose for you.

It’s forming a genuine, nuanced opinion based on your values – not parroting someone you saw on Instagram who seems smart.

It’s becoming attuned to your genuine taste in art by noticing what truly moves you – not just what’s trending or culturally popular.

And maybe I’m just some dumb American who’s been brought up in this hyper-individual society, and that’s why I think this matters.

Maybe it’s just the human condition to mimic – monkey see, monkey do, after all. Or maybe I’m as much of a sheep as everybody else, and my stupid brain just won’t allow me to see it.

Doesn’t matter to me why I care so much about living in this intentional way. And I don’t care whether or not this sentiment is karmically “good” or “evil” – all I know is that I have a deeply ingrained part in me that refuses to sacrifice my agency.

And I know that the more time I spend on social media feeds, the harder it gets to access that agency.

Not that I’m being “brainwashed” in some sci-fi way – it’s more like the constant drip of input crowds out my own thoughts. Which I think may be more important than at first glance.

On his blog, James Clear wrote: “Your actions are a consequence of your thoughts. Your thoughts are a consequence of what you consume.”

By this model, if we want to reclaim our actions – our agency – we need to protect the inputs.

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Not saying we should all quit the internet and live off the land.

I think that simply becoming aware of this incentive structure, and how it may or may not benefit us, is the first step in reclaiming a bit of this agency.

I don’t know how to finish writing things, so…

The End.