Gabrielle #31 – Cursed Algorithm

Sex as social media slop.

Videodrome (1983). A cautionary tale of someone being force-fed slop that was at least cool.

I’m a firm believer that you get the algorithm you deserve, and right now mine is howling. The rot varies across platforms, but Instagram is by far the worst. It recently clocked that I started training Muay Thai again after two months off following an injury, so now my explore page is full of girls with crazy arses doing kickbacks and maybe one of those “your month = your hedgehog” carousels in the middle.

It doesn’t help that I have a friend who incessantly sends me god awful content from lolcows or the worst “shock punk” solo artists (read: unregistered sex offenders) the internet has to offer, another providing regular “Asian dad fit” breakdowns, and another showering me with Creed memes. One of my suggested reels earlier today was a girl wearing a bathing suit in the shower, glancing back over her shoulder, with overlay text that said: “I might not be a 10 but I’ll let you leave the lights on & use all 4 holes.” This was sandwiched between bulking vs cutting advice promoted by a man helping his girlfriend lift from behind, and a photo of Dr Dre with Mr Blobby posted by Insane Championship Wrestling founder Mark Dallas. Someone said I have “the algo of a hetero man,” and it’s true – with a spirit to match, I fear. Due to the nature of my podcast consumption, I keep getting advertised Load Boost (a supplement intended to make you blow bigger loads, obviously).

I love it all, for the most part. To scroll at this point in internet history is to accept a high degree of slop and unreality as given. You can’t let it dictate your moods or you’ll go insane. However, the sheer amount of slop has increased dramatically in the last year. It’s always been there, but now it’s inescapable – frontloaded ahead of your friends, family, and personal interests. Instagram and X are equally stuffed with AI generated nonsense, squatting strangers, and uncensored images of dead bodies. TikTok is just marketing for leggings now and Bluesky was immediately colonised by liberal “bird app” deserters with bios that say “wine lover, childless.” Facebook has been fucked for so long it almost feels refreshingly traditional. Cheeky bit of unverified news about a Chinese baby who had a malformed twin surgically removed from her brain? Don’t mind if I do.

The upside of all this is it makes me spend less time on my phone. The internet is washed. It’s become too stupid to look at and not in the good way, like chaining old episodes of Big Brother. Even the small amount of slop I’m consuming has started twisting my melon, and I’ve developed a new preoccupation with my arse not being big enough even though it’s literally my best feature. It’s funny. We supposedly live in socially conservative, sex negative times, and yet sex is everywhere. It masquerades as innocent content – juggy women who simply love whisking eggs in a vest, shredded men who simply love riding motorbikes – while actual porn, sex industries, and art about sex are all heavily suppressed (often legally). A jarring sensation. Half this shit we’re only seeing in the first place because you can’t post a nipple without someone at Meta having a panic attack. Rather than boot sex off social media, though, censorship has simply given rise to a huge cottage industry of creators finding lucrative ways around it by smuggling smut into non-smut places. Worst of all, it’s boring. All titillation and no intrigue.

Obviously the antidote is to go outside, but as it stands the vast majority of people’s sex lives revolve around the internet. Certainly porn habits do. The current era of cursed algorithms means our desires are shaped more than ever by the false eye of marketing (which is all social media is), rather than a true human one. Forty seconds scrolling and I can literally feel my self-image being manipulated. How hideous is that? It reminds me of the fact that I shaved my entire body, every day, the whole time I was at secondary school. What for? Geography? Thank you, Veet.

You can resist these urges to do strange things to yourself in order to appear sexy to the phone gods, but you have to spend more time in the world (ideally as much of it possible – you will not, for example, get an idea of the broad scope of attraction by spending your life in Essex). You can change your algorithm, but you have to mute shit, manage your content preferences, mark things as ‘not interested.’ You have to be more intentional than ever about everything. Desire is an art, much like conversation, and the rules of the game are being rewritten by absolute fucking losers who understand neither.

Microplastics in our brains, balls, and posts. They are trying to devour us from within.

Stay vigilant.