Not For You

The algorithm makes everything boring

I remember one of the first stand-up bits I had fun writing that really worked. It was about Doritos. The first part of the bit was my absolute confusion at the slogan for Doritos for many years being, “If Not Now, When?” I mean, literally ANY. TIME. That’s fun and all but it’s not really substantial enough to justify bringing it up on stage, it needed more meat on the bone--or more dust on the chip, in this case. Then I was flipping through a People magazine during a $19 pedicure and saw a silly human interest story about how a cargo ship crashed off of the coast of North Carolina and thousands of bags of Doritos washed onto the beach. This was obviously part two of the bit, imagining being a kid who doesn’t want to go to the beach finally getting there and being like, “Holy crap, it’s all chips?!?!?!”

I loved that bit and I did it for years (and may bring it back when I’m opening for Anthony Devito’s special taping at The Gutter Friday 5/9, at his request). Goofing on the stupid slogan is fun, but what really made it a bit and not just a funny advertising observation was the story about the cargo ship and the beach. And the only reason I found that is I had time to kill and so I flipped through a magazine. I wasn’t Googling corn chip news or snack disasters, I found it by accident. I found it because I wasn’t looking at a perfectly curated algorithm of content on my phone.

My muse.

To be fair, I wasn’t on my phone because the iPhone was only in its second or third generation at that point and we were seemingly an eternity from the continual pummeling of “content we like” every time we tap on the screen. This was the era of $19 pedicures, after all, when there was a stack of magazines next to every chair and unless you desperately had to email someone from work, you didn’t really look at your phone during that time.

Sometimes I miss those days, where everything I saw wasn’t opted into or selected or algorithmically fed to me based on mountains of data. I’ll agree that tech has made huge parts of our lives way easier, but along the way we lost one of the things that makes life exciting: encountering something new, something outside of your world. Until the last few years, we all had to see a lot more content we didn’t choose. Even before the almighty algorithm and AI and Tiktok content being a watered down idea of a watered down idea, social media gave us things we selected to see and didn’t really give us anything we didn’t.

I’m 41. A huge part of my television viewing life happened before streaming. Appointment television was real. I actually got most of my news growing up by sitting through whatever news program came on before my favorite shows. I saw shows I would never have watched because I was waiting for Seinfeld to start at 9pm. I would sit through whatever show Fox shoved between The Simpsons and The X Files. We watched every commercial unless we were peeing.

When I listened to the radio, I flipped between 99.1 WHFS for alt rock, 103.1 for prog rock, and 102.7 for pop and hip hop, usually just caught in a cycle of commercials until I switched over to Mix 106.5 (the hits of the 80s, 90s, and today) and said, “This is fine,” to a Jewel song.

I remember taking many flights where I was under-prepared to entertain myself. I’d get a magazine or two and always a book I’m confident I’ll read but then am never in the mood for. On a trip to the Bahamas we’d barely be over North Carolina and I’d be done with Glamour and Mademoiselle (RIP) and there was no phone with wifi to keep me busy for the second half of the trip. There wasn’t a screen in the seatback in front of me with a library of everything from seasons of The Office to softcore porn, I mean Challengers. So I’d turn to the in-flight magazine, and then when things got really grim, a Sky Mall catalogue. I had to kill my last hour on board either price checking solar powered hot tubs or reading a list of places Tea Leoni loves to eat in Denver.

Kathy Ireland’s Puerto Vallarta.

It’s not just media, it’s everything. Shopping has become more algorithmic and undeniably digital. Where I used to go to stores to find something I wanted, now you barely have to think of an item and look at your phone and it’s on its way to you. But how many things did I find that either I wanted to buy or I learned existed at all on the shelves of stores when I was in person on the hunt? I mean, I don’t have an answer, but I’m sure a lot!

Those days are over. If you want to watch television, you can watch whatever you want whenever you want and mostly without commercials. If you want to listen to music, you’re your own personal DJ with no skips. If you’re commuting or traveling or waiting or existing, you can pop in headphones, look down, and never once encounter something that’s foreign to you.

And I think that sucks!!!!!!

Seeing things that aren’t specifically curated, designed, and made for you and your opinions is kind of the point of society. Being exposed to everything that our culture and world create is what keeps things interesting. If you want stuff tailored to your exact interests and zero outside anything, join a cult.

I hate to be this person, but I can see it affecting younger generations. Young people (and, increasingly, older people, too) aren’t used to things that aren’t for them, which is why when something not just opposes, but isn’t exactly FOR them, it’s taken as an act of aggression. It’s what causes the constant online whataboutism, the attacks on strangers, the sharp animosity. People online take a huge affront to having to see a commercial. Just guess what they do when they’re presented with legitimate opposition.

Sometimes, when I was waiting for an episode of Dr. Katz to come on, I had to sit through 15 minutes of whatever was on before. Occasionally I learned something from Win Ben Stein’s Money. Once I caught the end of an Ab Fab episode and became hooked and it was instantly a favorite show of mine to schedule life around. More importantly, a lot of the time, I saw some middle aged white guy comic I didn’t like and I just...moved on. I saw it, I thought about it, I decided if I liked it or not, and I went on and watched my show when it came on.

It’s important to learn to see things that aren’t for you. It makes us better, more understanding people. It also makes art significantly better. When your whole world is fed to you through an algorithm based on things you already personally like, then most of the things you consume are for you. They have the references you know, they feature the faces you’re familiar with. And it doesn’t challenge you. It doesn’t educate you. It doesn’t surprise you.

I remember when I saw the Doritos shipwreck story in the back of People. It was thrilling. Not that an old issue of a gossip magazine at a nail salon is particularly outside of my world view. But I rarely read People (I was always an Us Weekly fan when it came to my personal preference for misogyny and nightclub news), and I really rarely read it cover to cover. But here I was, bored and waiting and without the luxury of a content filled phone. I could listen to the woman next to me complain to her friend about how good The Brass Monkey was on Tuesday, or I could pick up this magazine. And then I found that article and instantly started thinking of this bit. I never would have seen it if I had my phone, I would have been scrolling friends’ vacation photos on Instagram or finding the next protein packed cottage cheese recipe.

To be clear, I’m not trying to be on a high horse (I’d literally never get on a horse). I will absolutely spend two hours nodding my way through my FYP on TikTok tonight as I drift into a fitful, nightmare-filled sleep. I’m not out here reading foreign newspapers or listening to classical FM radio. But maybe I should be. At this point, I can feel my own art getting narrower in scope because what I consume is getting narrower in scope.

I don’t want it to be! So my goal for the rest of this year is to see more stuff I don’t like. I don’t mean “hate watch,” I do plenty of that. But I need to watch a procedural on CBS before I binge Summer House. I should listen to a podcast I’ve never heard of that wasn’t mathematically fed to me by my phone. I should grab a newspaper at the airport and try and read it cover to cover instead of scrolling my Bluesky feed of just extremely online puns and hundreds of the same devastating Trump story of the day.

The good part is, I can always opt back into my feed whenever I get bored.

MORE STUFF! MORE STUFF!

I’ve been reading the book American Bulk by Emily Mester and loving the ways it’s making me think about spending and stuff.

We closed out Ruined’s Oscar Winner month with a reverse episode where I ruined A Perfect Murder.

Core crew holds it down another week on Welcome to Talk Town.

Josh and I are hosting the Monday 5/19 Frankenstein’s Baby, get your tickets!