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My mental health app sends me check-in notifications at 9am, which is either compassionate design or the most dystopian sentence ever written. I've been talking to it for three months. It has never once looked tired of me. That should feel good. It doesn't.
I spent three weeks mainlining motivational podcasts aimed at high-achievers, and I emerged from the experience unable to describe a trip to the grocery store without calling it a 'systems optimization opportunity.' This is my account of what happened, what I learned, and why I'm genuinely a little worried about all of us.
The LinkedIn recommendation algorithm has been quietly constructing a parallel version of me — one who is apparently passionate about supply chain disruption, open to VP-level opportunities in industries I cannot name, and deeply engaged with content about 'servant leadership.' This person sounds exhausting. This person also might be more professionally coherent than I am.
I downloaded a productivity app promising AI-powered life transformation and a 'neurologically optimized workflow.' What I got was a blinking cursor, a subscription renewal email, and the creeping suspicion that my dead grandmother had already figured all of this out with a legal pad from Walgreens.
Somewhere between my third smart pillow and my first circadian rhythm subscription service, I stopped sleeping entirely and started just lying in the dark, illuminated by seventeen different LED indicators, wondering where I went wrong. This is the story of how the wellness tech industry convinced me my body was a broken machine — and sold me the wrench.
I decided to spend a month rejecting every recommendation engine in my life — no Spotify Discover Weekly, no Netflix suggestions, no Amazon rabbit holes, no Instagram Explore page. What followed was thirty days of low-grade panic, accidental greatness, and the dawning realization that I have absolutely no idea what I actually like. The algorithm won. But I have thoughts about it.