Nobody knows me like the algorithm – and it costs me

Illustration by David Foldvari

There’s a fine moment in The Simpsons, where Homer pulls his car up to a screeching halt on “new billboard day”. He salutes his beloved advertising hoardings and promises to faithfully buy all their new products. Except for one. The ad for Krusty’s Clown College, which had “no effect on me whatsoever”. Inevitably, two scenes later, Homer is screaming at his family: “You people have stood in my way long enough! I’m going to clown college!”

Of course, these days, there’s no need to pull your car up. Because the billboards come to you. And they always know exactly what you want. “There’s always someone looking at you,” sang Bob Geldof on the Boomtown Rats’s 1980 Top 5 single Someone’s Looking at You. Three years later, we had Rockwell telling us: “I always feel like somebody’s watching me” on his smash hit Somebody’s Watching Me. How prescient these lads were – their lyrics are still rattling around my head more than 40 years later.

You know the sensation. You’ve just been chatting with your significant other about a winter break – or with your kids about the latest episode of Paw Patrol, or with your mum about a new brand of stool softener she’s trying – and you pick up your phone to have a look at your various social media accounts and, right there, jammed hard into your feeds, are adverts saying: “Incredible winter break deals! Paw Patrol toys massive sale now on! Stool softener bargains!”

Because there is always someone looking at you. The algo. And, man, the algo knows you better than you know yourself. Before you know it, you’re sitting on a beach in the Maldives with a lifesize effigy of Mayor Humdinger on your lap and a quart of Turd Flow Mega Softener working its magic up your arse.

I don’t even know how they’re doing this to me because I do not enable Siri and we have never owned an Alexa. I’m coming to suspect that, when I had my appendix out a few years back, Jeff Bezos had a team implant a listening device somewhere in there. How insidious can all of this get?

As a failed bedroom indie guitarist, I enjoy two things very much on the internet: pictures of indie guitarists, and scrolling guitars and amplifiers on eBay. The other day, Pinterest alerted me that it had some images I may enjoy: many shots of the Smiths playing live in their 1983-84 golden period. Indeed, I did enjoy them very much, including a lovely photograph of Johnny Marr on stage somewhere with two effects pedals very clearly visible on top of his amplifier.

“Hmmm, what’s Johnny using here?” I wondered. A little zooming-in confirmed that one of them was a Boss CE-2 Chorus pedal. From Pinterest, I hopped straight on to eBay, and a couple of days (and £135) later, I was feverishly unwrapping that very pedal. Of course, I still sounded no more like Johnny Marr circa 1984 than buying a vintage typewriter would make me write like James Joyce circa 1924, or buying a giant medallion and stick-on moustache would turn me into John Holmes circa 1974, but hey-ho.

A few days later, I found myself rereading – and massively enjoying – Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love, wherein we learn that James Bond prefers his “very strong coffee” to be “brewed in an American Chemex”. Later that afternoon, I found myself asking my wife if she’d ever heard of a Chemex coffee maker. She had not. But Google had. And – would you believe – so had Amazon. And, yes, you’ve guessed it, a couple of days (and £48) later, I was unwrapping that fine 007-approved coffee gadget.

And then, friends, shit got weirder. I had played a round of golf (please, stay with me) with my friend Allen, up north, at his home course. He lent me his old golf trolley. A Motocaddy Cube. In the car park after the game, I thanked him and told him how much I’d enjoyed using it. He said I was welcome to keep it, as it was a spare and the brake didn’t work properly, anyway. Now, being at heart a scrounging Scottish animal who believes the sweetest words in the English language are: “It’s free”, I was only too glad to accept this kind offer.

The next day, back at home, I was having a quick look across my social media and, lo and behold, what pops up but an advert for a Motocaddy golf bag that would perfectly match the new trolley I’d just been gifted. How? In the name of God, how? We were in a car park. My phone was in my bag. I do not enable Siri or have an Alexa. How are you doing this, you satanic bastards?

I bought the golf bag, of course. Absolute steal.

So, if you’re keeping track, in just over a week, the rabidly consumerist acts of looking at a photograph, reading a novel and accepting a gift from my friend have left me a little more than £200 lighter. Where do we go from here? You can see a world where, a couple of generations from now, you will turn on your shiny new laptop and a giant Starship Troopers brain bug-style proboscis will shoot out and smash straight into your cerebellum to suck up your every thought and memory before emptying your bank account.

Then, two hours later, an Amazon drone the size of a shipping container lands on your lawn and deposits every item you’ve ever coveted in your life. Meanwhile, halfway across the world, the 120-year-old Bezos watches your dome getting siphoned on a live feed from your laptop while furiously masturbating his billion-dollar robo-penis. You know that’s the future, right?

Well, enough. Not for me. Here is a man who would not take it any more. A man who stood up against the – ah, who am I kidding? You people have stood in my way long enough! I’m going to clown college!