The Manual Algorithm: How We Became the Thing We Hate

We Said We Wanted Freedom from the Algorithm. So Why Are We Acting Like One?

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Reflecting on the chaos we’ve become part of. The fragments don’t define us—there’s more to see, more to rebuild.

We Spent Years Blaming the Algorithm. So Why Are We Still Acting Like One?

We spent years blaming the algorithm. It was the reason everything felt louder, angrier, more extreme. The reason our feeds turned into battlegrounds, our conversations into competitions, and our emotions into currency.

Then came Substack—a platform that promised something different. No algorithm dictating what we see, no engagement-hungry machines tilting the scales. Just people writing, reading, and thinking.

And yet… here we are.

The algorithm is gone, but the behavior remains. We became the algorithm. We are angrier, louder, and more extreme.

I get it. Life feels like a dumpster fire, and it’s hard to focus on anything but the flames. But other things are happening in the world.

Someone still had a baby today. Someone still retired. Someone fell in love. Someone changed the world for the better. Good things happened, too.

Engagement Is a Hell of a Drug

The same forces we blamed on Big Tech are still at play. The only difference? Without AI pulling the levers, we’ve taken up the job ourselves.

Outrage spreads fastest. Fear gets clicks. The bigger the scandal, the bigger the audience.

Without a machine ranking our content, we rank it for each other. We write to maximize reaction, measuring success in attention instead of impact.

This isn’t just a problem for Substack—it’s everywhere. When everything is a five-alarm fire, how do we know when there’s a real emergency? And how do we make space for something hopeful?

Sex Sells, But All Sex All the Time? That’s Just a Trip to the ER

Let’s talk about excess.

We know sex sells. But if everything is sex, all the time, we don’t end up enlightened—we end up exhausted. It’s not sustainable. Even fun things become destructive when taken too far.

Same with outrage. Same with fear. Same with hot takes, takedowns, and “this changes everything” headlines.

If we keep consuming the world at this pace, we will burn out—not just as writers, but as people. We already are at least halfway through the burn.

A Deeper Thought

What we focus on shapes our reality. The more we fixate on what’s broken, the less likely we are to repair or heal it. It’s easy to get caught in the echo chamber of outrage and despair—after all, that’s what gets attention. But in doing so, we miss the bigger picture, the potential for change that exists just beyond the noise.

Take the image of the woman staring into the broken mirror. She can only see the fragments, the chaos, and the distortions. She’s unable to perceive her full self, the parts that are intact, the parts that can heal, or the parts that still hold hope. This mirrors how we often engage with the world online. When we’re stuck in a cycle of reaction and outrage, all we can see is what’s broken. We miss the opportunities to repair, to rebuild, and to create something better.

In a world of constant digital noise, we’re like that woman—fragmented, confused, and overwhelmed by the chaos. But just as the broken mirror doesn’t define her whole being, neither does the noise and chaos define the world. There’s more to see, more to create. But we have to intentionally choose to look beyond the brokenness.

By focusing on rebuilding and creating, we can begin to attract that energy back into our lives. What we focus on not only shapes our personal reality—it ripples outward, drawing more of what we focus on into our experience. If we intentionally focus on positive impact, we can draw more of that energy into our communities, our conversations, and even our platforms.

A Different Kind of Experiment

So here’s a thought: What if we resisted?

What if we wrote for impact instead of reaction? What if we stopped playing to the crowd and started writing like no one was watching? What if we built something instead of setting more things on fire?

The algorithm didn’t do this to us. We did. Which means we can undo it, too.

After all, the good parts of life are the ones we control. And those are the very things we’ve been giving away.

What if we didn’t just counter the bad—but actively created more good? What if we celebrated, honored, achieved, and built with something better in mind?

I’m all for that.

But I wonder—who’s with me?

Let’s Talk

Drop your thoughts in the comments:

• Have you noticed this pattern on Substack (or other platforms)?

• Have you ever resisted writing something engagement-driven, even if you knew it would get more attention?

• What’s one way we can shift back to real conversation instead of performance?

And if I’m just in an echo chamber, help me break out. Who should I be reading?