Getting off the algorithm: a starter kit

I recently watched a man at a bus stop scroll through thirty-eight seconds of short-form video without his expression changing once. He looked like he was checking his teeth in a mirror, except he was actually watching a hydraulic press crush a bowling ball and a recipe for pasta he will never cook. The algorithm is a slot machine that pays out in mild distractions rather than cash. It is a feedback loop designed to keep you leaning against a cold window until your thumb hurts. You are being fed like livestock, and the feed is mostly corn byproduct.

To stop eating the slop, you have to become a hunter-gatherer again. The first step is admitting that you cannot trust your own willpower against a billion-dollar engineering team. Delete the apps that use infinite scroll. If you want to check Twitter or Instagram, do it in a mobile browser where the interface is clunky and annoying. Friction is your only real friend here. You want the experience to be slightly miserable so you remember to leave.

Next, you need to rediscover the RSS feed. It is an ancient technology that the platforms tried to kill because they cannot monetize your attention if you control the pipe. Download a reader like NetNewsWire or Feedly. Go to the three blogs you actually respect and plug their URLs in. Now, instead of a machine deciding what you see based on rage-bait, you have a chronological list of things you actually care about. When the list is empty, you are done reading.

Newsletters are the other half of the escape hatch, provided you treat your inbox like a gated community. Subscribe to individuals, not brands. A person with a specific obsession is always more interesting than a social media manager trying to be relatable. If a newsletter starts feeling like a chore, unsubscribe immediately. You are looking for high-density information that rewards your time rather than just filling it.

Pick two or three specific websites and visit them manually. Type the URL into the bar like it is 1998. This sounds inefficient, but that is the point. Intentionality is the antidote to the mindless swipe. When you choose to visit a site, you are the customer. When you wait for a feed to refresh, you are the product. It is better to read one long, difficult essay that changes your mind than a thousand tweets that just confirm you are right.

This shift feels lonely at first. You will miss the manufactured consensus of the trending tab. You will worry that you are missing out on a joke everyone else is making. You aren't. You are just reclaiming the ability to think a thought that wasn't put there by a server in northern Virginia. Real life happens in the gaps between the pings. Go find a hobby that doesn't have a leaderboard.