The Recommendation Algorithm Doesn’t Know What’s Good
The recommendation algorithm keeps offering me my own past, reheated. I take it more often than I want to admit. I get slack. I comply. Then I pretend it’s taste.
I noticed it on a wet night off Parramatta Road, rain hard enough to make the street feel like a drain. My phone pushed a milk bar with a high rating and a menu I already knew. I walked in because I wanted easy, and I didn’t want to negotiate with myself.
The bloke behind the counter slid me a pie that had been camping under the heat lamp for ages. The crust gave up. The mince was warm and tired. I ate it anyway, standing there like a mug. Worn down will do that to you.
Outside, a guy in hi vis stood under the awning with a cigarette. His face said the day had taken its cut. He watched me chew and nodded at the pie. “That one’s rough.” He tipped his chin toward a laneway. “Filipino joint in there. Get the pork. You’ll be right.”
He hadn’t studied my history. He hadn’t mined my clicks. He just saw a stranger in the rain making a sad decision and decided to intervene. I followed him out of spite. Predictability pisses me off.
The place in the lane had one bulb, stuttering above the counter. Garlic sat in the air. Vinegar rode over the top of it, sharp enough to wake you up. The woman behind the counter gave me the look you get when you might waste a cook’s time.
I ordered what he told me to order. She gave a short nod, no theatre. The kitchen noise came from behind a half door, the slap of a board and a pan talking back. You could feel the place working.
The lechon kawali landed on a chipped plate. The crackling snapped when I cut into it. The sinigang came out steaming and the tamarind hit first, straight up the nose. One mouthful and my eyes watered. I put the spoon down for a second and breathed through it.
That jolt is the part a recommendation algorithm can’t deliver. It can predict what I’ll accept. It can’t sense when I need to be knocked sideways.
Living inside the recommendation algorithm
I hear the corporate lullabies everywhere. Convenience. Personalisation. Optimisation. Words that taste like tap water.
The feed learns your habits and keeps feeding them back to you. You take the safe option because the odd thing never appears. The odd thing never appears because you never took it. That loop looks harmless from the inside. It turns your appetite into a fenced yard.
Food doesn’t move like that. New dishes show up because someone burns a tray and goes again. Flavours shift because a cook refuses to sand the edges off. Kitchens run on heat, timing, and people with opinions. Nobody becomes great by checking last week’s spreadsheet.
People don’t move like that either. You don’t grow by hearing your own thoughts echoed back at you in nicer fonts. You don’t change by living in the lane where nothing surprises you and nothing costs you. That isn’t calm. That’s stagnation dressed as choice.
I’m not throwing stones from a high horse. I’ve spent nights ordering the same takeaway and watching the same junk. I’ve chased that soft little hit of recognition. It’s easy, and it asks nothing of you except your attention.
That soup kept cutting through the grease and the noise in my head. The sourness wasn’t polite. It didn’t care if I was ready. I felt my face tighten and my eyes water. The room sharpened around me. That’s a rare thing when you spend half your life being guided.
The woman put down dessert without a word, like she’d decided I’d earned it. Cassava cake showed up after, dense and sweet. Coconut sat under it, quiet and steady. I hadn’t asked.
I thought about how the machine treats me. It doesn’t hate me. It doesn’t like me. It keeps me predictable because predictable converts. I hand it the data, and it returns the version of me that clicks yes with minimal friction. The part I don’t like is how quickly I start cooperating, then defending it.
Taste can shrink fast. One month of safe choices and you start calling them preference. You start arguing for the narrow world, like you built it on purpose. You start thinking surprise is for other people, for people with spare time, for people who aren’t tired. That’s the lie you tell yourself while you eat another pie under another heat lamp.
Back in the rain, my phone stayed in my pocket. I walked to the station with pork grease on my lips and sour soup in my nose. The search bar got nothing.
Tomorrow night I’m going back down that laneway and ordering blind. If the bulb is still flickering, I’ll sit under it anyway and let the menu make the decision.
