Kick the Algo-Rhythm

in

Am I getting old or is the internet just not as fun as it used to be? Are youths even calling it “The Internet” anymore? Given the number of syllables they’d have to say, I’m doubtful. Back in the nineties, it was a concept even a simpleton like me could understand. You spent so much time dialing up its contents and waiting for them to appear, that interactions were entirely intentional. Building a website took legitimate effort, so people didn’t feel compelled to share their every idiotic thought with the world. To disconnect from the internet, you would go to the one hulking PC that your whole family shared and simply hit the on/off switch.

Three key factors in our current era make my sweet little version of the web seem laughably nostalgic. For starters, devices these days are everywhere and designed specifically not to be turned off. Wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to gather more data on your family! My grill doesn’t even want to go night-night, lest it miss a software update. There is at least one moment every day where I press a button on one of our devices and nothing happens. That layer of intelligence thinks it knows better. Give me the good old days of a solid mechanical click, followed by exactly what I asked for. I’ll live with the consequences.

You can blame another major shift squarely on money. Admittedly, those in my era were a bit spoiled. Some of y’all won’t believe this, but Facebook used to be cool. When it opened to Auburn University students my junior year, enthusiastic coeds rushed to post all their hot party pics and stalk those of others. Online communities blossomed. People shared mostly positive content without worrying about how it would be used. Potential future employers didn’t have access! Neither did our parents!

Many tech giants of today offered a warm & fuzzy feeling back then. Twitter didn’t start out as a place for angry people. Google, Youtube and the like were similarly prioritizing a free, enjoyable experience. Eventually, the party ended. Time to monetize all of the accrued eyeballs and move into the black! Seemingly in a flash, we became the product, sellable to the highest bidder. 

I used to get a chuckle out of the ads that mistakenly pegged me as their audience - a feminine hygiene product interrupting my yoga video or a preview assuming I want to watch people talk about sports (humanity’s dumbest invention). That type of miss rarely happens anymore. The nudges also now include way more than ads. Why only market to someone when you can reliably influence their behaviors? Now that’s where the money is. Then maybe they could convince me to watch those people talk about sports and convert the lead after all. 

In more recent times, discerning between the real and fake has also complicated matters. In our house hangs a picture of my girls together right after Libby was born. I vetoed it (overruled!) because one of them has a photoshopped face from a different image. The moment is accurate in essence but technically a fake. That’s childsplay, however, when compared to what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is capable of. If you’ve spent most of your adult life trusting your eyeballs on what is authentic, then buckle up, partner. You don’t even have to be good at the behind-the-scenes stuff anymore, as any idiot can have a term paper or a realistic looking video of a presidential candidate generated in no time. I never thought I’d have to insert a note that I wrote all of this by myself without the help of AI. 

So where does all this leave us? Dear reader, should I just tell you to get off my lawn so I can return to a polarizing twenty-four-hour news channel and doom scroll my feed? Should I slam a bag of Doritos and let Youtubers tell me their conspiracy theories? Negative. I can do better. We can do better.

Humans, after all, have made it this far. Contrary to what headlines suggest, we’re actually a bunch of independent-thinking, unique beings. Sure it may be tough to find the actual truth but we wrote the code in the first place. The bright ideas of humans propelled us this far into modernity. Surely our ability to be rational, compassionate and understanding can be involved in future progress. It never fails that the person who gets all hot and bothered online is usually much nicer in person. Don’t let the tools that were designed to connect us tear us apart. 

Prior to posting that next rant or angry comment, might I ask you to take a minute and think about it? Are you super duper sure? Is yours the only possible true narrative? Will it all be silly in two hours, next week or years from now?

With an emotional interaction, you are giving the algorithm exactly what it wants - the type of hit that keeps you coming back for more. Without even thinking, that phone will magically be in your hands again, and the loop continues.

Instead, try being unpredictably open minded. Throw off the search engines and advertisers with some out-of-character goodness. Learn something new outside your comfort zone. Use your home devices for their intended purposes, like checking the cooking temp of salmon or telling kid-appropriate jokes. Go talk to people in person without your phone as an ever-present accessory. Call me old fashioned, but I still think our diverse collective can get together and have a good time while also celebrating our differences. Homogeneity sucks. If our feeds must be filled, let them be filled with sweet party pics!  

The Next Chapter

in

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Nobody tells you the challenging aspect of this question is actually pinpointing when grown-up status has been achieved. Maturity is an intangible concept. I pay bills with my name on them, eat the occasional chicken-nugget free meal, and operate motorized vehicles with some proficiency. But do I feel grown up?

From a career perspective, things have pivoted a bit since college Chappy envisioned that a job engineering race cars was on the table. Turns out you have to be pretty smart for that. For a brief shining period toward the end of my four year stint, I worked with a renowned graduate professor who was doing cool stuff in the automotive space. That door shut, however, as soon as someone showed him my GPA. Still gainfully employable with a degree in mechanical engineering, I accepted the first offer that came along. Hello disposable income!

My job was to get familiar with a 3D modeling program and draw up piping systems for factories. I quickly learned that all of that education was merely to serve as the sanity check. Building a virtual factory piece by piece wasn’t much different than following Ikea instructions. And when I pressed the button to simulate an earthquake, hurricane or other unsavory situation, I could look at the output and say “yep, that makes sense.”

That company was good to me, and it provided a relatively smooth transition into corporate life. It even turned a blind eye to my weekly email newsletter called (you guessed it) “Chappy’s Thoughts” where I penned (mostly immature) musings on life. After living semester by semester for so long, a year and a half doing the same thing felt like an eternity. It wasn’t their fault that I needed more than a computer to interact with for 40 hours a week. 

My next job kicked off a transitional phase where I occasionally did a bit of engineering but thankfully not enough to worry anyone. Much of my day to day involved developing relationships and driving around the beautiful state of Alabama. Not a bad gig, and they even threw in a pension (a term I initially had to look up). Two years in I took on a “sales” role, which was funny because I do not ever recall influencing anyone’s purchasing behavior. It would simply get cold, my customers would use more natural gas and my achievements would be lauded. 

Still I felt restless with the pace of things. Everyone treated me well and I had every reason to be happy where I was, but the challenge wasn’t there. I filled my extra hours writing, compiling a whole book of Chappy’s Thoughts and dreaming up new business ventures that ultimately didn’t go anywhere.

In the summer of 2012, an opportunity materialized. A friend from the local startup community had just launched an innovative product and was targeting a niche that I could wrap my head around. There were a lot of factors to consider. Common sense said to keep cruising with the cushy setup - eventually funding my own big idea. But I had a feeling, and that’s all I could go off of. Against the advice of many, I put in my notice and took a terrifying leap into the startup world. 

The last 12 years have been a wild ride. As expected, those early days were chock full of exciting challenges. My job description for more than a year was simply “everything the other guy isn’t doing.” Not only did I have virtually zero experience in most areas, but the two of us had to figure it out on a shoestring budget. As we grew, my role evolved to include customer support, sales, product management, and partnerships. I came to enjoy telling the story and acting as the front door to our company. Whether it was a customer, partner or coworker, my aim was to impart the belief I had in what we were doing. 

It may come as a surprise, then, that I turned in my resignation letter a few days prior to my 40th birthday. The decision wasn’t easy, but there was that gut feeling creeping in again. We were in a good place with a lot of talented employees. It has ultimately been a healthy turn to no longer feel like a pivotal cog in the machine. After a lengthy notice period, I gave a tearful goodbye last Friday and handed in my stuff.

So what now? 

I must admit, it has been a fun exercise talking through my plans for this next chapter with friends and strangers alike. “YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!” was far and away the most common sentiment. We’re so ingrained with the idea that one must toil away at a job until you are 65, then you kick your feet up after a hard life’s work. I’m extremely fortunate to have this opportunity, so you can best bet I won’t be wasting it.

Call it a grand experiment. And if it doesn’t work out, there’s only one person to blame. For at least one year, I want to orient my life around the tenets below. I know these to be paths to my own personal happiness because I’ve experienced their impact in small doses over the years. I can also attest that they are corroborated in the stacks of self-help books I’ve plowed through as of late.

  1. Be curious. Experience and observe how awesome, huge and hilarious the world can be if one only pays attention. 

  2. Give back daily. I want to do more for other people than I do for myself.

  3. Embrace real work. It’s time to be a useful and skilled member of society who can grow food, cook proficiently, fix things, build stuff and create from scratch. 

  4. Go full Dad mode. I would love to give my wife and kids the best version of me, not the one they’ve been seeing a lot of in the last 5 or so years. 

  5. Write it all down. At worst, people might at least pick up a few fun facts. If it provides entertainment, then all the better.

The goal is a meaningful, purposeful and joy-filled life. Week one starts now. Time to find out what I want to be when I grow up.

Sign up for the weekly newsletter at the bottom of the page follow along. Cheers!