The Algorithm Wrote a Version of Me I've Never Met

I opened my saved folder the other night expecting to find what I usually find — poorly lit photos of other people's living rooms and a recipe I'll never make. Instead I found a stranger's life.

According to that folder, I do yoga at dawn. I own a supplement organizer. I have strong opinions about protein. There were three separate screenshots about optimizing my sleep. Me. The person whose alarm goes off at a time I'd rather not publish, who once ate a granola bar in a parking lot and called it dinner.

That's the moment I realized I've been living a double life. Not on purpose. The algorithm just assembled a version of me out of partial evidence and ran with it — and it's been writing my biography for months while I wasn't looking.

What the Algorithm Thinks I Do for a Living

According to my recommendations, I'm a wellness creator with a morning routine brand. My ads are for magnesium, cold plunges, ergonomic something-or-other, and a subscription service that sends me tiny jars of powder. Nobody is trying to sell me a pencil. Nobody thinks I need another notebook, which is frankly the most insulting part of all of this.

My suggested accounts are all people who speak in calm, low voices about nervous system regulation. My feed is a spa. My saved posts are a spa. Somewhere in the last year, my casual interest in feeling slightly better became a whole identity that a machine built for me without my consent.

The funny part is I know exactly how it happened. I clicked. I paused. I watched a thirty-second video about sleep hygiene at 1 a.m. because I was awake. That's all it takes. One moment of vulnerability and you're a wellness influencer forever.

The Receipts Show Two Different People

My saved folder is a crime scene of two personalities. Half of it is calm, orderly, aspirational. The other half is a chaotic creative life: twelve screenshots of paint colors, a tutorial on repairing a chair, three tabs about publishing, screenshots of essay openings I liked, and someone's photo of a cat sitting in an unusually shaped pot.

That second half is the real one. That's how I actually spend my brain. But the recommendation engine doesn't reward the version of me that's curious, scattered, and interested in six unrelated things. It rewards the version that can be neatly categorized and sold a product.

So my feed has slowly narrowed toward one tidy plotline while the creative chaos of my actual life keeps spilling out in the background like the laundry I keep meaning to fold.

The Part That's My Fault

Here's where I stop blaming the machine and take a hard look in the mirror. Once I noticed the algorithm's version of me, I realized I'd started performing for it. Slightly. In ways I didn't clock at the time.

I'd hesitate before posting something that didn't fit the pattern. I'd wonder whether a photo of my chaotic desk would confuse the people who came for one thing. I'd catch myself thinking in terms of what the feed wanted rather than what I actually had to say. That's the real double life. The platform didn't invent the mismatch. It just made me nervous about the true one.

If you build any kind of public platform, this is the weird tax nobody mentions. The more consistent you become, the more the machine expects you to stay that way. Deviation is a risk. Which is absurd, because I've never met a creative person whose whole thing wasn't a little bit of a beautifully disorganized mess.

What I'm Doing About It

Nothing dramatic. I'm not going offline or writing a manifesto. I'm just going to feed the machine better evidence and see what happens.

I'm saving the weird stuff. The half-finished thoughts, the chair repair, the messy desk, the books I'm reading badly and slowly. I'm following more people who do things I can't categorize. I'm turning off ad personalization where I can and accepting that a chunk of this is just weather — it happens to everybody, and nobody fully wins.

And I'm going to write about the mismatch honestly instead of quietly trying to live up to a recommendation. Turns out the most interesting thing I own is the gap between what the feed thinks I am and what I actually did today, which was wander around my apartment looking for a pen and eat a questionable snack.

So hello to the wellness people who found me and are now confused about why there's an essay on my homepage about the guilt of abandoned drafts. You're welcome here. Bring your tiny jars of powder. I've got nowhere to be.

And to whichever version of me the algorithm keeps recommending — you seem nice. Very hydrated. Very organized. We should meet someday. In the meantime, I'll be over here, saving a screenshot of a cat in a pot.