When the Algorithm Knows You Better Than You Do

The other night, my husband and I were watching TV, and we noticed something. GLP-1 commercials. Back to back. Sometimes three in a row. So we tried something small and a little ridiculous: we muted them and said out loud the commercials we'd actually want to see.

Travel. Adventures. Fast food. Cats. Cat food. Cat toys. Cat litter.

For a few minutes, the Wegovy ones disappeared. It didn't work perfectly. But it worked enough to feel like something. Like we had taken the remote back — even just briefly — from whatever was deciding what we needed to see.

It made me think about Amazon.

Back when it was just books, you'd order one, and it would suggest others. Not always directly connected. But right more often than felt comfortable. It was paying attention to you. Noticing patterns you hadn't noticed yourself. Quietly building a picture of who you were based on what you reached for.

That was twenty-something years ago. The algorithm has gotten a lot better since then.

It knows what you've been searching. It knows what time of day you pick up your phone. It knows when you're tired, when you're soft, when you're most likely to feel like something about yourself needs fixing. And it shows up exactly then.

Not because it's evil. Because it's very, very good at its job.

The question isn't whether that's creepy. It is a little creepy. But that's not really the point.

The point is this: something out there is paying exquisite attention to your patterns, your vulnerabilities, your quiet moments of self-doubt. It has studied you. It knows when to knock.

When did you last do the same for yourself?

Not the critical voice that catalogs everything wrong. Not the scroll at midnight that lets someone else decide what you should want. But real attention. Quiet attention. The kind that asks — what do I actually want right now? Not what am I being told to want. What is actually true for me in this moment?

Muting the commercials and saying the thing you'd actually want to see — that's not a small thing. That's a practice.

It's the muscle of knowing yourself. Of interrupting the noise long enough to hear something quieter underneath it. Of being, for just a moment, more interested in your own signal than in what's being broadcast at you.

You don't have to be perfect at it. We weren't. The Wegovy commercials came back. But it worked enough to feel like something.

That's all it takes to start. Just enough to feel like something.

If you've been living so long inside someone else's version of what you should want that you've lost track of your own — that's worth exploring. That's exactly what therapy is for.