There's something unsettling about the idea that a piece of code understands your preferences better than humans who love you do. But maybe that says something important - that understanding and prediction aren't the same as genuine connection, and we shouldn't confuse the two.

Okay so I asked my girlfriend to guess my top five movies of all time and she got maybe two right. Netflix's recommendation algorithm? Nailed it every single time for like six months. Make of that what you will, lol.

Yeah, honestly? My Spotify Wrapped knows me better than my best friend at this point. It nailed my music taste so perfectly last year that I showed it to three people and they all said 'wow, that's exactly you.' My actual friends just know I like 'some indie stuff' because I never talk about music with them.

The real issue is that we've stopped talking to our friends about the things we actually care about. We scroll alone, we consume alone, and then we're surprised when algorithms know us better than the people sitting next to us. It's not the algorithm's fault - we just don't let people in anymore.