Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. Today, I'll be sharing with you an opinion you might find surprising about a fact you didn't previously know. Or perhaps I'll be confirming an opinion you already had with 30 minutes of context that helps you to understand that what you were already inclined to believe is, in fact, gospel truth.

Alternately, I'll be revealing something new and deeply personal about myself. I actually do have a surprising opinion here, but we'll get to that shortly. First, a broad observation.

For most of us Internet citizens, algorithms decide what we think about 
and how we feel to a remarkable degree. I know this because I've been emerging from a depression and part of the way I've been emerging from it is not engaging with algorithms as much. Like when I watch TikTok, I am letting TikTok decide whether I feel happy or outraged, whether I am looking at cute puppies or the horrors of injustice, and whether I am sympathetic to or disgusted by certain ways of thinking.

The only choice I make is whether to engage in TikTok. Like, yes, you shape your algorithm in the sense  that it finds and uses your  particular vulnerabilities, fears, wishes, and joys, et cetera. But the idea that I decide how I feel after opening TikTok is a lie that I whisper to myself in order to go on.

But the surprising thing I learned during my month away from algorithms is that the actual world is also in the business of deciding how you feel and when you feel it. Like, while I was recovering, I went fishing and there are certain ways you can improve your chances of catching a fish, but to a large extent, it's just a pretty randomized reward, and mostly you just sit there drinking Miller Lite and saying things like “I guess this is why they call it fishing, not catching”.  But then, suddenly, you are catching a fish, and it's very exciting, and then you're releasing this slithering creature  back into the White River,  and you're like, I want to do this again! I think I'll cast again and see if I can go back to catching instead of fishing.

Another time during my break, I went on a walk in the woods, and I felt okay. I felt sad, but really calm, if that makes sense, because I'd been working on spending time in the natural world and breathing outside air and trying to notice sensation. The wind on my skin, the visual static of leaves moving in the breeze, the sound of blue jays piercing through the sky, and so on. 

I still felt very sad all the time and like life on Earth was a big old joke 
with humanity as the punchline, but the sadness was no longer, like, crushing, It was sort of survivable. And some of the reason I felt this way was because of the woods, right? Like, the natural world and my being intertwined with it was itself lifting my spirits. And then a coyote came out of the woods and stood directly in my path, staring at me.

Now, could I beat a coyote in a fight? Maybe. I mean, they're relatively small, I'm relatively big. But on the other hand, they're, like, seasoned predators practiced at the art of survival and I'm, like, a depressive Indiana resident practiced at the art of Instagram. 

So I felt a surge of panic, energy coursed through my body. It wasn't so different than when I sensed a threat from a disparaging comment on TikTok or when a big news story was breaking live on Twitter.

I was in the middle of a drama, and I was an actor in that drama, 
and I didn't know how the play was going to end. So I had been feeling kind of vaguely sad but okay about being sad, but now I was feeling something else, something specific and super intense: fear, excitement, dread-renaline.

Anyway, then the coyote casually walked back into the woods as if I wasn't much of a meal or much of a threat, and I felt this huge flood of relief. 

And so, it's not only algorithms that decide how we feel and what we think about— even in the so-called natural world, I, the purported captain of the ship of myself, do not decide how I feel when there is a coyote in my path. Algorithms are in the business of working with our biology to recreate those intense and singular experiences of the natural world: the randomized rewards, the intensity of feeling, 
et cetera. They put the fish on the hook, but only occasionally, and they put coyotes in our path quite regularly.

Remembering that, that these technologies are using my biology, exploiting my biology to turn my consciousness into their capital, 
is one of the central things I want to hold on to as I return to the Internet.

Hank, I'll see you on Friday.