Do Streaming Recommendations Steal Your Soul

With that said, I don’t advise embracing the irrational or acting against your own interests.  It will not make you happy, nor will it prove a point.  Randomness is a poor substitute for genuine freedom.  Instead, perhaps you should reconsider the unstated premise of your query, which is that your identity is defined by your consumer choices.  Your fear that you’ve become boring might have less to do with your supposedly vanilla taste than the fact that these platforms have conditioned us to see our souls through the lens of formulaic categories that are designed to be legible to advertisers.  It’s all too easy to mistake our character for the bullet points that grace our bios:  our relationship status, our professional affiliations, the posts and memes and threads that we’ve liked, the purchases we’ve made, and the playlists we’ve built.
What remains more difficult to predict are the qualities that make you truly distinct:  your thoughts and beliefs, your personal history, the unspoken nuances of the relationships that have made you who you are, and the unbounded expanse of moral and imaginative possibilities that constitutes your own mind.  Attending to those aspects of yourself is the work of a lifetime — and far from boring.
—     Meghan O’Gieblyn
From her article:  “Dear Cloud Support:  Am I Stuck In A Groove“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  Dtd:  Dec 2021 / Jan 2022 issue
There is also an online version at:  https://www.wired.com/story/cloud-support-music-apps-predictability/
[But I believe the article may be behind a paywall.  I am a subscriber to the hard-copy magazine.    —    kmab]
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On This Day In:
2021	Too Bad Politics And Greed Get In The Way
	Little Prayers
2020	Precarious Fools
	A Shining City Upon A Hill
2019	How #45’s Father Raised Him For Incompetence
2018	Describing #45 – “The Loser” – As A Successful Businessman
	Raking – #PresidentIdiot Proposes Full Employment For California
2017	Federal Deficit, National Debt And Tax Cuts For The 1%
2016	Picky, Picky, Picky
2015	Another Limitation On Religion
2014	Enduring
2013	Tell Me More…
2012	Passing…
2011	Fake It ‘Til You Make It

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