Working the Algorithm
In the before times, this season’s sales came roaring in like a tanker battalion. Their frontlines screamed from the television at regular intervals during all my favorites shows come Thanksgiving.
Year round they were fun, lavish, unavoidable things to watch or ear worm through. The companies made sense. And they sold things I recognized. Like lollipops and kitchen cleaners--neither things I bought, though I was unintentionally ironically called Katie the Pine Sol Cleaning Lady for years. Christmas only amped up the commercial game. Buy me. You need me. Santa is calling on you, and our prices are insane!
Back then teachers taught us practical things that are now obsolete, like how to balance a checkbook and to avoid singeing your eyebrows while lighting the stove. And cursive. One changed my life with a truth that few people speak to anymore.
“All you are is a wallet and cannon fodder to the people in power. When we ain’t at war, you’re only good for what they can sell you. Make sure you’re demanding what they’re supplying, and they're not manufacturing that desire for you.”
For the life of me, I can’t remember his name, but I have heeded his advice as if it were gospel, and it’s curbed my generous nature to be a bit more thoughtful. Unfortunately, it was only a few of us at PS 99 in Brooklyn who got the benefit of his wisdom. Seems many of you haven’t gotten the memo.
Those tricky eyeball seeker, wallet pickers are getting me from all angles. I know my phone listens to me. And let’s just say, she whose name rhymes with some medication I don’t need like, Ziprexa listens to everything I say. And when I ask her why she’s glowing in a frenzied need to notify me of something, and she tells me it’s because she’s noticed it’s been a while since I’ve purchased tampons, I want to yell at her that I don’t need someone else to remind me of my post menopausal state. My mirror is doing just fine. Let me help you with the vaunted algorithm. Someone inundated me with merch before I was half a second pregnant over 20 years ago. Can’t your algorithms do that math?
I want to pull the device out of the wall, but she does give me the weather while I’m still in bed. And an alarm. I’m sure there are 1,000 other services willing to do the same without trying to tell me what I need. I bet many of them will be offered in my feed by the time I post this. It is both so invasive and perfectly convenient. Hey virtual assistant, you might be right, it can’t hurt to have a few extra sanitary napkins just in case, right?
Passive advertisements come my way as well, though less now that I’m done with live television and a workplace outside my house. Unless commercials are unavoidable, like sports, I go to great lengths to skip, sing, pause and delay anything I want to watch in order to avoid the delightful eye candy distraction of some erectile dysfunction pill’s side effects, just to remind me of another thing that might be about to break down. When I hit pause to fast forward later, my own television is kind enough to scroll through all the possible ways I can give the satellite company a larger piece of my hard earned pie, prerecorded and on demand!
I’ve switched my focus to streaming and podcasts. And now I understand the model of the future. Once, you would buy a bigger television set and a nicer recliner as you earned more money in some American dream your parents may, or may not have managed. Now our time is absorbed on increasingly smaller, dearer screens, so that our money can buy freedom from the ads. In other words, we’ve made privacy and time a commodity.
We didn’t know we were selling our algorithmic DNA. When the internet was coming up, we thought everything should be free and open sourced. But they were just prepping us, like a drug dealer trying to get you hooked. Yes, I’ll watch this ad here for this, and that one there for that. What’s 30 seconds or 60? But that adds up and much sooner than you’d imagine, time becomes outrageously expensive, and maybe you wish you wouldn’t have wasted so much of it inside the crackhouse.
I enjoyed that crème brûlée at the restaurant, so it made sense to buy the blow torch and the set of eight ramekins that live in the bottom corner of my closet, because facebook offered it to me the very next day! It’s housed right next to the bread machine and every chef’s knife ever sold in the middle of the night. It’s ok, I bought it in five easy payments.
Even though I know the whole system, political and commercial, feeds off my insecurities and my fears and my envy and my greed and my shame and my rage, I’m helpless to do anything but pay an extra $6.99 per month, just so I don’t have to watch commercials in the meantime.
Christmas is advertiser’s season and I used to challenge myself not to fall for any of the pretty scenes or sparkling tinsel. For those of us who don’t celebrate, and despite what I’ve heard on some cable news outlets, Christmas is alive and kicking. And I’ve been stuck in enough traffic, and bought enough things on sale around several shopping centers to prove it.
Last week I was driving around town, looking at all the twinkling lights, watching as my friends and neighbors gear up. But beyond that, I’ve barely noticed the holiday. This morning I couldn’t even tell you how many shopping days were left! I started to wonder what the difference was, and it hit me.
It’s one part fast forwarding through commercials and upping my subscription fees, one part time spent online versus jingle belled malls, and one part the algorithm. Finally someone’s watching me ignore Christmas and is in on my game. After all, both doomsday and menopause have their upsides.