The algorithm ate my friend.
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Recently, I was in NYC and I grabbed a coffee with an old friend from college. When we sat down, I told him that he looked almost identical to how he looked back in school.
You’ve really been taking care of yourself, man. Congrats!
But that was the only thing similar. Something else was wildly off.
Every few minutes, he'd pull out his phone to snap a photo. The coffee on the table with NYC buildings in the background. The vintage wallpaper in the bathroom. His outfit. He worked through our conversation like he was performing for an invisible audience I couldn’t see.
"This would make great content," he said, as he repositioned the coffee cup, his Mercedes keys, and sunglasses.
I recognized him, but at the same time, he was a complete stranger.
This was the same guy who used to spend hours talking philosophy in our dorm. Who'd lose track of time reading weird books or listening to indie albums I’d never heard of.
Now, when he speaks, it sounds like written social media content.
“Hook-y.”
My guess is that this shift happened gradually. He started posting his thoughts online, noticed certain topics got a lot of engagement, so he posted more of those. The feedback loop likely got tighter over time. His actual interests got replaced by what performed well. And now this performance was making its way to his offline life.
He told me that he doesn't really read books anymore. Instead, he uses ChatGPT to summarize them so he can write "banger threads." Talking to him doesn’t actually feel like a real conversation…it feels more like someone listening for quotable moments. Every experience gets filtered through a lens of "will this get views?"
He’s a walking content factory.
People who were thoughtfully complex have turned into walking brands. Creative folks have become slaves to social media. I am certainly not immune. I’ve felt this myself as I get deeper into the game.
The algorithm doesn't just show us content. It shapes us into content.
When everything you do is measured by likes and comments, you stop doing things simply because you enjoy them. You lose the ability to just exist without documenting everything around you. To think without imagining content. To live without performing.
My friend makes good money now. Brands send him free stuff. Strangers recognize him on the street.
But over coffee, I saw something change in his eyes. A little flicker of the person he used to be. The one who used to do things because they mattered to him.
Long before the algorithm ate him alive.
What’s your take on today’s topic? Do you agree, disagree, or is there something I missed?
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What you describe here is EXACTLY why I originally left social media completely sometime around 2012 and then, after returning with a more deliberate attitude, have continued to alternate between use/engagement and periods of distance/detachment. After my first few years of using Facebook and Twitter in the aughts, I noticed they had effectively colonized my mind. I found myself spontaneously framing and evaluating everyday events and interactions in terms of their potential post value. To put it emphatically: Eff that. My inner world is not real estate to be developed by tech companies.
This is why I dropped many of the social platforms, stopped chasing the best hooks, got off the social media treadmill and just started to write. I no longer wanted to feel like a social media content robot. I will not be returning there.