That stupid social media algorithm

Day 67

Again, I purposely left the writing for the next day.  Last night, by 8:30PM I was lying in bed on an extended petting session with Taco and I finally disconnected from my phone no later than 9:30PM.  Went to bed extremely early (for my standards) and I was able to get a good night sleep which is great news.

But anyways, switching topic a little bit, and it does have to do with technology and more specifically with social media and their algorithms on what information they feed you.  You see, I’m a big guy in general, big frame, very tall, etc. and food is one thing that I truly enjoy, that doesn’t mean I eat like crazy, on the contrary, I’m kind of mindful on what I eat/drink especially on week days, but nevertheless the whole idea is that I love eating and food.

So I recently found myself watching funny little videos of food on IG and Facebook and what I “mistake” that was.  Now, all I get is food recipes left and right, and not of the healthy ones but all sweets and desserts but that in itself is not a problem, the problem is that I started to save all those so I can replicate them at home.

I’m not a cook but I can defend myself and with Pi Day (March 14^th) approaching, I think a good pie recipe may come my way, however, I do hate that the algorithm works like that.  It can be really pleasing to get videos of things you interact with but at the same time is worrisome since very inaccurate or dangerous information can be fed to easily manipulated minds just for shock value and pure interest.

I’ve had my fair share of friends whom, for whatever reason, start to share and complain about information the deem controversial or bad or whatever, may that from their political position or way of thinking, and sadly social media amplifies that thing up to a dangerous levels.  Think of anything that has to do with political stances or social positions, and you will notice that some people are fed upon those and since they interact with those posts, they keep getting them and well, something miniscule can be turned into a major issue for the person who reads that.

I even had a friend who started to share Q Anon stuff and that honestly panicked me that I had to talk to him about it, or more recently that my dad was fed Russian propaganda on a constant basis that I got freaked out about it and told him to stop reading whatever he is reading and to take his head out of that gutter.

Anyways, the algorithms can be interesting but dangerous, now I’m being fed constant dessert videos, but far more dangerous stuff are being circulated around and we have to be vigilant of them because is very easy to fall for those, since the most controversial and outrageous posts are the ones that generate the most clicks and sadly certain topics fall into those categories (unjustly).

NOTE: below a picture of my WhatsApp chat with myself LOL