The Brand Where a Person Used to Be

On algorithms, identity and the slow erosion of being a real person

Part Two of The Feed

A couple weeks ago, I left off in Part One by saying we needed to sit with discomfort for a minute…to sit in the truth of the algorithm and the part we all play in it. I hope some of the numbers and stats really sank in…that the reality of what these platforms are actually doing fires up our bones. It’s important to pull back the curtain, see what’s behind it, sit with it, and then decide what to do with it.

But, you guys, I’d be lying if I said I practiced what I preached.

While I was writing that piece, while I was connecting the dots between dopamine loops, loneliness, and the infinity ladder of connection…Yas had literally been trying to have this exact conversation with me for months now.

How did I respond? I did the thing I do when I assume something doesn’t really impact me, or worse, when something goes a little over my head. I just listened enough to engage, I gave a “yeah, uh-huh” without even looking up from my screen, and I mentally filed it under “for later” or “Yas’ work stuff,” and quickly changed the subject. That and then I also revert to my bad habit of doom-scrolling Instagram, which…in hindsight…is an almost poetic kind of irony…given what he was actually trying to tell me.

It’s not my best look, not something I’m proud of…and YES,
I should have paid more attention.

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In his brilliant AuDHD-minded way (not at all even a little annoying…wink wink), Yas sends me articles to read daily…or he will conveniently (strategically) have a YouTube podcast “on” when I get home from work. It typically is about marketing, reach or something about how a particular platform decides what gets seen, or why a piece written years ago still finds its way to people or how the mechanics of how anyone shows up on top.

I’ve introduced my lovely and freakin’ brilliant husband Yas, but what I didn’t share is the part of his background that makes him different from most of the people in his field. He didn’t come to this work through a computer science degree, he actually came through film studies and photography. Which means he doesn’t think about any of this the way most people in his world do. He thinks about things in the way a filmmaker thinks about where to point the camera.

What’s the viewer drawn to? …and why? What lives just outside the frame?

That eye, that way he sees the architecture underneath things…it’s a rare combination. He IS a rare combination of SO many beautiful complexities and a huge reason why I married a man who can sit at our dinner table and explain something about the mechanics of attention in ways that I actually care to hear, even when I initially don’t want to.

When I started really thinking about how I wanted to show up in the world…in the kitchen, in a room with strangers, on the couch with friends, on the page and at a table…that’s when things started to fall into place, and the dots started connecting. All the concepts and the philosophy behind the algorithm that Yas had so patiently tried to explain before, it all began to make sense, and even more so, I began to understand why it was so important for me to pay attention to.

And my honest first reaction to this realization…was a significant eye-roll. I do NOT like admitting I’m wrong or that I may not completely understand something. I’m a Virgo, after all.

Because at the end of the day, I know enough to be messy…and probably a little dangerous. I know enough to know what most of this looks like from the outside, and how uncomfortable it makes me. The keyword-stuffed articles written by no one for no one…the content that looks like content but means nothing…the hollow, scammy, gaming-the-system tactics of being visible.

And honestly, I didn’t want to be anywhere near that. I am a chef…I’m a mother…I’m a wife…I love people…I love to cook…I love to write…I am not a content machine.

Yas has been patient about that, too. He knows the ick version of SEO and optimization that exists. He’s not trying to defend it; he wanted me to understand it was something much bigger. He wanted me to understand that the algorithm is the water that we are all swimming in.

Not understanding the water doesn’t mean we aren’t in it or immune to it;
it just makes us less informed fish.

Are we swimming? Or are we just treading in one spot, on the verge of drowning?

We are all in the water whether we like it or not. So what are we going to do about it?

I don’t even think he understood the connection for me. You see, the ocean has always been my place of peace, the place I would go to clear my head, understand my heart, and those inner places that were hidden away. The waves would expose and wash over me, leeching away anything worth shedding or not needed anymore. The ocean both terrifies me and enamors me all at the same time. It is my happy place.

The water analogy was what I needed for it all to start to make sense.

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One night while we were watching TV, Yas said something to me, casually and randomly as he does…the way he drops these bombs when I’m least ready for it.

He said: somewhere in the last decade, humans started performing like brands. And the algorithm, the one that gives you the ick, is a huge reason why.

Once he said it, I couldn’t unhear it…and I immediately hated it.

When your visibility…your ability to be seen, to be heard, to build any kind of following or career or even just a sense of existing in the world…becomes SO dependent on metrics, you inherently start performing. Consciously or not. You post what gets responses…you calibrate your personality to what gets likes…you edit your life into a feed.

The scariest part is you don’t always notice you’re doing it.

With the instant feedback, the instant gratification, and engagement, it starts to feel like connection. It starts to feel like people are really seeing you…but they’re not, not really. They’re seeing the version of you that the algorithm rewarded. Which, coincidentally, is the version you’ve now started becoming. Which is…I mean, do you see the loop, the dangerous “if, then” cycle we start to fall into?

In Part One of this series, I brought up the dopamine cycle…the scroll, the pause, the reward, the scroll again. This is essentially the identity version of that same loop. You post, you get feedback, you adjust, you post the adjusted version, you get more feedback. And slowly…

You become someone you constructed instead of someone you discovered…
you become a brand where a person used to be.

Identity formation…the messy, private, experimental, allowed-to-fail-quietly kind…is now happening in public…in real time, and in front of an audience that provides instant numerical feedback on every single move you make. The algorithm rewards the performance of authenticity over actual authenticity, because performance is designed to perform.

The real thing…the messy, unresolved, still-figuring-it-out real authenticity…doesn’t really get the likes, or the saves, or the shares…and it starts to feel like it’s not enough. So we edit. We curate. We perform.

Hearing this made me BOIL INSIDE. I was so fucking furious…not at Yas..but at the setup, and more honestly, I was furious with myself. Because I recognized that I have been falling into this loop, too.

A person is a person, messy, complex and full of contradictions. When a person starts constructing themselves the way a brand does…performing care instead of giving it, curating vulnerability instead of being vulnerable, building a personal brand where a personality used to be…something essential starts to erode…erosion in the bones, in the foundation of who they were.

I wrote about this in Good Bones last week. About how we’ve replaced presence with process, connection with content strategy, and care with white-washed customer service. About how we’ve turned hospitality into a vibe, and vibes are not bones. As I sat down to write this, I started putting these pieces together and realized the algorithm is the mechanism underneath that very erosion. The feed didn’t just change what we see…it’s changing who we are actually becoming. And most of us (me!) don’t even notice, because we’re too busy checking our engagement (likes, views, even unreplied-to text messages) to really consider what it might be costing us.

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What does it mean to stay true to a mission…a foundation…the bones…personal or professional? This is what I’m working through…as a chef, a writer, a mother, a wife, a friend, a person trying to make something honest. How do we stay grounded and true to ourselves when the conditions we’re working under keep changing…when the rules of how to be visible change every six months? When the version of yourself that gets rewarded today might not be the version that gets rewarded next month? When the platforms you’re standing on can pull the rug out from under you whenever they feel like it?

I don’t have a clean answer for any of that, and I don’t think anyone does. Yas doesn’t either, but what he is showing me is that trying to avoid the questions or pretend they don’t apply to me…thinking I can just opt out, refuse to look at it, stay above the fray because I’m a “real” chef or a “real” writer or whatever flavor of authenticity I want to claim…isn’t a position. It’s just denial dressed up as integrity. Because you’re in the water either way. Swim or drown.

I’m trying…trying to understand the system without becoming it. I’m trying to figure out what staying true to my mission actually looks like in a moment where everything keeps shifting...so quickly. Some days are easier than others…and then some days, I catch myself checking the likes on a post I wrote from my actual heart and feeling deflated when the numbers are low. That’s when I have to sit with the fact that I…the person writing this whole damn series about not letting the algorithm run your life…just let the algorithm run my feelings for a solid forty-five minutes.

It’s humbling, for sure. And I don’t think I’m the only one. I think more of us feel this way than are willing to say it out loud.

Understand the system. Know what it is. Know what it wants from you. And then decide, deliberately, what you’re actually going to give it.

In my heart of hearts, the metric I care most about isn’t reach…it’s resonance. It’s the moment when someone reads something and feels joy or feels seen… “she said the thing I didn’t have words for.” That moment can’t be engineered or gamed…it can only be honest and earned. Resonance requires the same thing I wrote about in Good Bones…you have to actually see the person on the other side of the screen. You have to give something real, freely, without counting what comes back.

The algorithm doesn’t reward that; it rewards performance. And knowing that, I’m choosing to do it my way anyway, because I think the bones matter more.

How any of this actually shakes out for me…what staying true to a mission looks like in real time, on the ground, in this kitchen, on this page…that’s where Part Three is going. And, honestly, I’m still figuring it out.

I’ll meet you there.

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This is Part Two of The Feed. Part One was on the push and pull of algorithms, the dopamine loop, the infinity ladder, and the business of manufactured loneliness…is here. Part Three is coming.

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