How we became predictable — and how to stop being used
We are being studied, sorted, and steered.
Not in a distant, abstract sense — but in the most intimate way possible. The way you pause on a post. The stories that spike your anger. The headlines that make you feel vindicated, or afraid, or certain. All of it is tracked, refined, and fed back to you.
Your attention is not just captured. It is cultivated.
And somewhere along the way, we stopped noticing.
This isn’t about “the left” or “the right.” It’s not about who is correct. It’s about something more structural: a system that has learned how to make all of us predictable — and profitable — at the same time.
We like to think we’re thinking for ourselves. But increasingly, we’re reacting along well-mapped lines.
There is, however, a way out.
It doesn’t look like winning arguments. It doesn’t look like better slogans or sharper takedowns.
It looks like something far less comfortable — and far more powerful.
Radical curiosity.
The Invisible Architecture of Outrage
Scroll through any feed and you’ll see it: a constant current of urgency. Something is always breaking. Someone is always wrong. Some group is always threatening something fundamental.
It feels organic. It feels real.
But beneath that surface is a set of incentives that rarely get discussed.
Algorithms are not designed to inform you. They are designed to hold you. And over time, they have become exceptionally good at identifying what keeps you engaged — not as a citizen, but as a nervous system.
Anger works. Fear works. Moral certainty works best of all.
So the system learns.
If you lean left, you may be shown stories that confirm corruption, inequality, exploitation — patterns that feel undeniable and urgent. If you lean right, you may be shown stories of cultural erosion, instability, loss of control — equally undeniable, equally urgent.
Different inputs. Same emotional architecture.
The result? Two people can look at entirely different versions of reality and arrive at the same conclusion: something is deeply wrong, and the other side is to blame.
Neither person is foolish. Both are responding to a curated environment.
And that environment is not neutral.
A Marketplace of Minds
What we’re living in is, in many ways, an unregulated attention economy — a marketplace where your focus is the most valuable commodity.
Advertisers compete for it. Political campaigns depend on it. Nation-states quietly manipulate it. Private equity funds back the platforms that refine it. Entire industries are built on increasing the precision with which your behavior can be predicted.
This is where older disciplines — psychoanalysis, behavioral science, military strategy, marketing — begin to blur together.
The goal is not just persuasion. It’s conditioning.
Not just what you think, but how you react. How quickly. How intensely. How reliably.
And here’s the part that often gets missed: the system doesn’t require bad intent to produce bad outcomes. It simply requires incentives that reward engagement above all else.
Outrage spreads faster than nuance. Certainty travels farther than doubt. Identity binds tighter than complexity.
So those are the signals that get amplified.
Over time, the loudest voices aren’t necessarily the most thoughtful — they’re the most predictable.
Beyond Left, Right, and “In Between”
It’s tempting to respond to all this by reaching for a familiar solution: moderation, balance, centrism.
But even that can become another identity — another lane in the same system.
“I’m the reasonable one” is still a position the algorithm can map, anticipate, and serve.
The deeper issue isn’t where you stand. It’s how fixed your stance becomes — and how easily your reactions can be triggered.
Certainty, across the spectrum, is highly usable.
If your responses can be predicted, they can be guided. If they can be guided, they can be scaled. And if they can be scaled, they can be monetized — or weaponized.
What resists this system isn’t a new ideology.
It’s unpredictability.
Radical Curiosity as Disruption
Radical curiosity is not passive. It’s not polite agreement. It’s not “let’s all get along.”
It’s an active refusal to accept simple narratives about complex people.
It asks questions that don’t fit neatly into feeds:
- What experiences shaped this person’s view?
- What fear or value is underneath this position?
- What would have to be true for this perspective to make sense?
It also turns inward:
- Why did that post provoke me so quickly?
- Who benefits from my reaction right now?
- What might I be missing?
This is not about abandoning conviction. It’s about loosening the grip of reflex.
Because reflex is where the system thrives.
When you pause — even briefly — you interrupt the loop.
When you seek understanding instead of immediate judgment, you become harder to model.
And a system built on prediction struggles with people who don’t behave predictably.
The Power You’re Told You Don’t Have
There’s a persistent narrative that individuals are powerless in the face of these systems.
It’s convenient. It’s also incomplete.
Every interaction you have online — every click, share, comment, second of attention — is a signal. Not a symbolic one. A measurable one.
At scale, those signals shape what gets amplified and what fades.
Yes, there are well-funded actors — organizations, governments, interest groups — spending enormous sums to influence narratives. That asymmetry is real.
But amplification doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
It requires participation.
Millions of people, acting in good faith, often end up reinforcing the very dynamics they would oppose — simply by engaging in ways that feel natural.
The system doesn’t need you to agree with it.
It just needs you to react.
When Empathy Isn’t Enough
Empathy is often presented as the solution. And it matters — but on its own, it can be shallow.
It can be performed. Branded. Packaged into something that signals virtue without requiring effort.
Radical curiosity goes further.
It requires time. Attention. Discomfort.
It means hearing something that clashes with your worldview and resisting the urge to immediately categorize it as ignorance or malice.
It means recognizing that people are rarely as simple as the roles they’re assigned in political narratives.
And it means accepting that understanding someone does not require agreeing with them.
That distinction matters.
Because without it, empathy collapses into either condescension or tribal loyalty.
Cultural Embracification (Without Erasure)
A healthier culture isn’t one where differences disappear. It’s one where differences aren’t automatically weaponized.
Call it cultural embracification: not assimilation, not fragmentation, but interaction.
Messy, imperfect, sometimes uncomfortable interaction.
It allows people to retain identity while still encountering others as individuals — not as representatives of opposing camps.
This kind of culture is harder to scale digitally. It doesn’t produce clean, viral moments.
But it produces something more durable: relationships that are not easily reduced to narratives.
And relationships are much harder to manipulate than abstractions.
A Different Kind of Participation
If the system is shaped by engagement, then changing the system begins with changing how we engage.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. But intentionally.
Pause before reacting to content designed to provoke.
Seek out long-form thinking over clipped outrage.
Engage with people directly, not just their representations.
Notice patterns in what you’re shown — and what you’re not.
Most importantly: step outside the feed when you can.
Real conversations — unfiltered, unscripted, inefficient — remain one of the few spaces that resist algorithmic shaping.
They are slower. More awkward. Less certain.
And precisely for that reason, more real.
The Quiet Rebellion
Radical curiosity doesn’t trend easily. It doesn’t generate instant validation.
It is, in many ways, a quiet act.
But it carries a different kind of force.
Because it breaks a fundamental assumption: that humans can be neatly categorized, reliably triggered, and consistently steered.
The more that assumption holds, the more the system works.
The more it breaks, the less stable the system becomes.
This isn’t about withdrawing from the world. It’s about engaging with it differently.
Not as a set of sides to defend — but as a landscape to understand.
A Small Experiment
Try something simple.
Think of someone whose views you find difficult — maybe even infuriating.
Instead of engaging with their position, ask them about their experience.
Not their stance. Their story.
Listen without preparing your response.
You may not agree with what you hear. That’s not the point.
The point is that, for a moment, the script is interrupted.
And in that interruption, something subtle happens:
The person in front of you becomes harder to reduce.
Harder to categorize.
Harder to use.
We don’t need a new ideology nearly as much as we need a new posture.
Less certainty. More attention.
Less reaction. More inquiry.
Because in a world optimized to predict you, the most powerful thing you can become…
is difficult to predict.
Originally published on Medium. It lives here now — new essays land in the Journal first.
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