The Algorithm Is You
How to Reset Your Feed, Rewire Your Mind, and Reclaim the Future You Actually Want
You scroll. You like. You pause a second too long on that clip of a shouting match in a parking lot, and suddenly you’re surrounded by rage. You click on a post about betrayal, and the algorithm thinks you’d like some more despair with your coffee tomorrow. You chuckle at a sarcastic meme about broken relationships—guess what shows up next? Divorce lawyers. At 9 AM. With sponsored links.
Welcome to the house you accidentally built.
In The Double-Edged Sword of Social Media and Credit Cards, I explored how social media isn’t some neutral medium—it’s a mirror that curves back toward you like a funhouse reflection. Except it isn’t all that fun when it starts subtly shaping your beliefs, your moods, your expectations of the world. But there’s a deeper truth I didn’t fully grasp until recently, and it came from Gary Vaynerchuk.
He said: “You are the algorithm.”
At first, that might sound like motivational fluff. You know, the kind of thing that would be followed by a hashtag and a “crush it” fist bump. But it’s actually a profound—and dangerous—truth. Because if you are the algorithm, then what you choose to see is what you become. And what you become, over time, is shaped by what you’ve allowed to shape you. It’s recursive. It’s exponential. It’s terrifying. And yes, it’s fixable.
Hacking the Feed, Healing the Self
Instagram did something recently that most people didn’t even notice—probably because it was buried under more digital layers than a Russian nesting doll. But if you dig through your profile, past settings and content preferences, you’ll find a quiet little option: Reset Suggested Content.
It’s like wiping the chalkboard of your subconscious. Hit that button and, poof, the algorithm forgets what it thought you wanted. It’s a rare kind of digital amnesia—like a witness protection program for your attention span.
Now, combine that with Gary’s advice: after the reset, start searching for “positivity,” “hope,” “generosity,” “kindness,” and whatever else you actually want more of in your life. Like a monk tuning the frequency of a sacred bell, you can train the machine to hum to your frequency instead of the other way around. This is where the algorithm becomes an extension of your will, not your weakness.
But there’s a deeper caution here. Even with this newfound control, the algorithm still has power. And if you aren’t careful, it will take the wheel again the moment you let your guard down. It’s like training a dog that’s part golden retriever, part velociraptor. Feed it the wrong thing, and suddenly it’s dragging you back into chaos.
The emotional tug here is simple: if we don’t curate our feeds, we outsource the curation of our lives. We hand over our internal compass to an engine whose only goal is engagement, not enrichment.
Credit Cards, Cat Videos, and Choosing Your Reality
In that earlier post, I compared the algorithm to credit card companies. They start with a little data—where you shop, what you buy, how often—and from that, they build a model of your desires. Over time, they don’t just reflect who you are; they anticipate who you might become. If you let them. Social media does the same. But instead of just predicting your purchases, it predicts your politics, your mood, your friendships. And worse, it feeds you the distorted version of your own curiosity until you start believing that’s all the world has to offer.
So is there a crossover between the Gary Vee “you are the algorithm” idea and the invisible influence of financial algorithms? Maybe not in a straight line. But in both cases, the deeper truth is this: systems evolve based on inputs. The difference is that credit card companies won’t let you press a reset button. Instagram just did. Use it.
We live in a world where a single pause on a cat video means you’re now “interested in felines” for the next three months. That’s the reality we’ve allowed. But what if we turned that around? What if your next three months were built around optimism, gratitude, connection, purpose?
You have more power than you think. You are not just a consumer of information—you’re a creator of context. Every tap, every search, every ignored video is a seed planted in the garden of your own mind.
The question is: are you growing flowers… or weeds?
