Hacking The Algo

Photo by Zachary DeBottis on Unsplash

Jamie’s at my house for the weekend. She is my brilliant 16 year old niece. When Jamie visits the years wash away and I become something fresh and young and new.

That is, until I look in the mirror.

“Jamie what have you got for us this weekend?” I ask.

Jamie time won’t last forever you know and I don’t want to miss a second.

We decided to begin with a late morning ice cream cone down on the old dock. We grab bowls to capture the drip of our oversized cones and plant ourselves on the edge of the dock.

Jamie time is my respite from the haunting mirrors of middle age. All the detritus that got swept into dark corners reemerges. Simultaneously we become more and more attached to our favorite stories and beliefs. Somehow along the way to 60 I began to believe in my stories. Worse, having learned to trust the storytellers, I had made myself vulnerable. And I wasn’t alone. So it makes sense then that an interloper would find easy passage, nesting in our facile psyches.

Interloper is too kind, mind you. I am talking about wretchedness so penetrating that it is reshaping what it means to be part of the human family.

We are quietly being devoured by carnivorous parasites, quietly sucking our marrow down to the bone.

Most of us don’t even know it’s happening.

For my peers, 2026 is sort of like one big hall of mirrors. And my best efforts to point at the illusion goes unacknowledged.

I can see the movie reviews now.

“A spellbinding dystopic universe filled with harrowing plot twists.”

“The protagonist is such a tragic character. He is both his own savior and his personal satan, the existential threat to a life in motion.”

I mention some version of my concern to Jamie, curious to hear her thoughts on the topic. She looks at me with that side glance that teenagers have been looking at old people with for millennia. Regardless of the era. “You’ve got to be kidding,” it says. “Whatever,” it protests.

“What, Jamie?” I ask. “You are giving me that look!”

“Clearly, you don’t understand The Algorithm,” she says nonchalantly.

“What?” I ask. I defend my cool tech status. “I do too know what an algorithm is.”

Jamie snickers. “Exactly. This is not an algorithm. This is The Algorithm. And we all, pointing at an invisible group of her peer group, we understand its behavior.”

“Behavior? It’s a computer command.” And then I remember. The creepy crawling feeling of that interloper.

“Yeah, we know it’s there so we don’t buy into anything it says.”

“And yet it still has uses,” she adds. “You don’t need to take a blow torch to it,” she jokes, tousling my hair. This is a playful jab at one of the favorite Aunt Muffy moments when a bout of lice led me to eschew creams and nit pickers for a buzz cut. Given my blow torch tendencies I was one of few in my larger social circle who abandoned all social media platforms in hopes of maintaining a chaste mind.

“We’re not obsessed with the big stories, because they are unverifiable. We are interested in collections of smaller stories that we can weave together first hand account by first hand account. These stories are simple, have fewer characters and less moving parts. For example if you are trying to track down a celebrity. There is a way to do it by using a web of simple 1st hand data points. It works below the stories. The Algo owns the stories now.”

For a moment time stops and I am Ally Sheedy and I am teamed up with my best friend Matthew Broderick as they hack good old fashioned tech to build a map to find Joshua.

“Show me show me” I squeal.

“This,” she says, and turns her phone sideways like she’s dealing cards. “Okay. So. Say I want to find out where some celebrity actually is right now, not where their publicist says they are.” she continues.

I am already ready to hack the Pentagon, my fingers hovering over some imaginary keyboard from 1983.

“It’s just like WarGames,” I say. “You’re basically Matthew Broderick, hacking the school computer to change your grades before he finds Joshua.”

Jamie doesn’t look up. “Who’s Joshua?”

“The computer. The AI. Global Thermonuclear War.” I groan dramatically.

I am delighted with myself.

Jamie continues.

“Ok, well anyways.” Jamie says, pausing before she continues. First, someone always posts something dumb and specific. Not “having a great day,” something with a location baked in without them meaning to. A receipt in the background. A weird little regional product.” Jamie says.

She flicks through something too fast for me to see. “Then I check who else is tagged nearby, not by them, but by other people, randoms, at the same place, same hour.” She adds.

“But how do you know?” I start.

“Because I follow one of the randoms already, from a totally different thing, two years ago, some dance video. So I know she’s real. She’s not a bot, she’s not paid, she doesn’t know she’s a source.” Jamie shrugs like this is obvious, like I’ve asked her how a doorknob works. “That’s the whole thing, Aunt Muffy. It’s not one post. It’s four people who don’t know each other, who all showed up in the same place, and I already trust one of them for a completely unrelated reason.And they unknowingly become my 1st hand source.” Jamie says.

I groan. I get it but I don’t get it entirely. This map is of an upside down universe where the rules are being built now in real time.

The first thing I must entertain is that I won’t find my way to the true story using old fashion technology. What I will continue to find is a chorus of crows cawing the same story with slight twists. And that is The Algo at work.

Something small clicks into place “The only winning move is not to play.” I say, quoting Joshua the computer character in War Games. “Adding, mind blown.”

Jamie laughs. “You are such a dork, Aunt Muffy.” she says.

“Takes one to know one” I say.

I pull her toward me for a quick hug. “Look at us. Two dorks sitting on the dock of the bay, birthing our own living verification network.” I say.

Jamie snorts. “Blow torch,” she adds.