I've been watching youtube videos of people describing extreme and nightmarish psychedelic experiences.
One person claimed, in their drug induced visions, to have watched humans evolve and progress from apes to the present day and beyond. First opposable thumbs, then, fire, metallurgy, industrialization, the internet, and eventually colonization of space. Anyway, in his vision, some time after space colonization, Earth was obliterated by nuclear war. At that point, the youtube algorithm decided it was a good time to show some commercials. Probably, it thinks the heaviness of Earth being depicted as being destroyed is a good setting to make a sell. So, the first commercial is for some product sold by a company which happens to share the same name as me, and the commercial ends by saying my name. Then a second commercial starts and the first words are "This is the future you created".
So to summarize, the world is depicted as being destroyed and then I get, "<My name>. This is the future you created." Yeah, so I guess I understand the algorithm's logic. Heavy moment in the content, make it personal (how about a commercial with my name in it), make it relatable (how about a commercial that shares keywords with the title). No sophistication is required in the explanation. It's just good psychology to use association and leverage powerful sentiment, I guess. But I have to admit, if I were some other person who were more gullible, knew less about technology, or who were otherwise susceptible, I might be sitting here thinking I was a real life anti-John Conner or something. Youtube, or the universe, or what have you, did kind of blame me for destroying Earth, after all.
Instead, I just felt worry. Because, the world is full of people who are susceptible to this kind of thing. And, probably, the core audience of these videos (psychedelic experience videos) are some of the more susceptible. Other ads I've seen on Youtube lately include an ad for a secret bible verse which the government is covering up, because it contains the key to having your prayers be answered, and if all prayers were answered, then the pharmaceutical industry wouldn't make money, because nobody would be sick. Another ad I saw claimed that there was an impending truly apocalyptic attack on American patriots by the left.
So, anyways, it scares me a little the way algorithms seems to try to get personal, feed into people's fears, and help manipulators and charlatans target the vulnerable, etc.
