There was a time when we chose what to see. Now, it sometimes feels like our screens choose for us. Open Instagram, and within seconds, you are surrounded by content that feels strangely personal: your favourite artists, the clothes you like, the places you dream of visiting, and the jokes that somehow always make you laugh. The algorithm watches what makes you stop scrolling, what you replay, what you like, and what you ignore.
Then it learns. It develops a taste, not its own, but yours, or at least a version of you it has carefully observed. And perhaps that is what makes it unsettling: Instagram doesn’t simply know what we like anymore; it knows what keeps us looking. Your Explore page can slowly become a mirror, reflecting your interests, insecurities, desires, and curiosities back at you. But a mirror only reflects. The algorithm, on the other hand, decides what appears in front of the mirror.
Think about how quickly a single interaction can change your feed. Watch three videos about travelling, and suddenly your screen is full of airports, hotels, packing tips, and dream destinations. Like a video about a particular fashion trend, and suddenly everyone seems to be wearing it. Spend a few minutes watching productivity content, and your feed begins whispering that you should be doing more, becoming more, achieving more.
Eventually, we stop noticing the difference between discovering something and being repeatedly presented with it. And maybe that is the algorithm’s most fascinating power: it can turn repetition into desire. It can make something feel familiar before it ever feels like our choice. So perhaps the question is not whether the algorithm has a taste now; it clearly does. The question is: how much of that taste are we willing to call our own?