The Algorithm is the great villain of the 21st century. Apparently it is so evil, it competes against drugs for the top spot as the most pernicious invention in history. That’s what we’re being told, all of which is a load of crap.
The Algorithm has been illustrated as this digital overlord hiding behind our screens, feeding us material to watch and react in a certain way, for the purpose of keeping us obsessed with our phones like a fat kid in a pool of candy. Yet, I wonder, do people have a clue what an algorithm is?
Simple. It is a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer. Think of it as a computer’s own manual on how to deliver information when we use a search engine, scroll mindlessly on Instagram, ask ChatGPT a question—you get the idea.
Who programmed these algorithms? Software engineers. Who pays software engineers? Tech companies whose chief executive officers grew up during the rise of personal computing. Most of them are Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, with a few Millennials, all born during the second half of the twentieth century when human civilization was at its peak before it went to shit.
It was a fun time being a kid those days. You could play outside, had many friends, watched TV, played video games, and talked to adults who looked you in the eye instead of being distracted by a goddamned phone. Those days aren’t coming back.
However, if you were a nerd interested in science fiction, were tech savvy, studied hard, and fantasized about big-breasted aliens from Star Trek, you were the target of bullies who held no mercy for the short-statured, lean-built intellectually curious. Also, varsity cheerleaders would never date you, as they preferred the muscular football player who bullied geeks.
The agony nerds felt during their youth was real, combined with sexual frustration as they were unable to get laid. But pain and humiliation didn’t deter them. It motivated them. They knew that emerging technologies like computers would make them powerful enough to unleash their vengeance.
By the time social media and smartphones exploded in the 2010s, tech nerds were already on top of the world as the wealthiest and most powerful people, not to mention they were among the best paid employees.
Over a billion customers had an apparatus to access almost any piece of information they wanted. Instead of using it to educate themselves and become genuinely smarter, they used it to stalk other people, download porn, argue with strangers, and contribute to conspiracy theories about aliens.
At some point when this was happening, a person whose name we might never know, engineered the evil Algorithm that would begin the undoing of the human soul. Its purpose is to keep us obsessed with information in the form of images, videos, politics, cats—anything we want, the Algorithm provides, because it was made to make you… happy!
Whenever we use the internet, the Algorithm responds like a big nanny with a big scrumptious bowl of your favorite meal, ready to shove a big spoon right in your mouth so you can eat as much as you want without consequences. All it asks in return is that you keep asking for more. It won’t give a crap if you die.
Tech nerds don’t need to do much to shatter thousands of years of traditional values and gender roles. The evil Algorithm does the job on its own across social media, distributing extreme propaganda that compels normal people to attack each other passionately, like feminism, red-pill masculinity, political correctness, conspiracy theories, genderism, wokeism, MAGA-ism, and the oldest of all conflicts: religion.
Today, friends and families are being torn apart over politics. Mass upheavals over cultural differences are shattering countries into pieces. The number of people, especially younger folks, are more anxious, anti-social and drug-dependent than prior generations. Men and women would rather stay lonely and childless because, for some reason, bringing a child into this world is selfish.
Meanwhile, the development of robotics and artificial intelligence is rapidly rendering human skill permanently obsolete. Why? Because we have been helping AI get smarter by feeding the Algorithm with information about everything we know.
It was a trap we never saw coming. And when machinery can do well over fifty percent of labor, people will finish each other off, leaving trillionaire nerds relishing in their own paradise somewhere remote.
Is the evil Algorithm Lord Voldemort dressed in a Matrix-coded robe? Well, no. The Algorithm is what we make of it. It is a mechanism we program ourselves unconsciously, so that we tailor our devices to become a never-ending wishing well that provides everything we want to watch and hear.
Here is the catch: not everything we like, or love, makes our lives better.
It has been working against us ever since it premiered because all it does, at the end of the day, is provide monetary growth for whoever owns a piece of technology and data-driven companies. Does that make tech nerds and the Algorithm the entities to blame for all the woes happening globally?
Well, tech nerds have an advantage: they are smart enough to understand that most people make bad decisions when they are miserable and want something to stop making them feel worthless. They used this knowledge when designing the evil Algorithm, and it has been working to flawless perfection.
Is anything I’m saying true? Who cares, but it puts a lot of things in perspective. This great modern evil we keep blaming on a computer code we don’t even know how it works is completely absurd and an absolute distraction from the true source.
The great evil is within us, in our desire to be instantly gratified, in our need to feel special doing something important, like trying to save the world sitting on our asses, even though what we are actually doing is wasting significant time of our precious lives looking at a fucking screen.
You wanna stop those vengeful nerds from taking over the world, even though they kind of already did? Take control of your urges first. Don’t fall for stupid content from influencers and pseudo-thinkers that attempt to alter reality and turn us against each other.
Instead, do something that gives your time on Earth some value. Live in reality, not what others tell you what reality is. If you would be gone today, would you say you have done enough to leave peacefully? Let that be your motivation to do good things from now on.
Books, videos, and audio stories:
Don Luis Zavala 