Lies, Damned Lies, and Social Media Algorithms

When it comes to our social media algorithms, Satan himself couldn’t have done a better job of arranging a perfect storm of alienation between our two most human cohorts: men and women.

As a woman, I see a plethora of “You go, girl” type content, including the claims that “I am enough,” that if someone is draining to be around I should “go no contact,” and that normal human conflict in intimate relationships is probably narcissistic abuse with no solution except separation. It somehow never occurs to my algorithm that I might be a terrible person myself. It’s possible that I shouldn’t actually “go” if I’m going in the wrong direction. If I’m not terrible and I am the wonderful person my algorithm assumes that I am, I might have something to offer to the ‘draining’ person – oh, I don’t know, like love, prayer, or even the kind of mentorship that could help a person start to receive from God so that they could turn around and have something to give to others instead of always being a taker. Even wonderful people can be the draining person to be around themselves, without even realizing it, although in the mind of my algorithm, it’s always the other person who’s draining me, using me, and abusing me. It’s never me, not least because I’m a woman, and isn’t it the men who do all the using and abusing? God forbid that I might be the one exhibiting narcissistic behaviors, but also, my algorithm seems unaware of the fact that narcissism is a vanishingly rare personality disorder that probably shouldn’t be over-diagnosed, especially when the one doing the diagnosing got their medical degree from TikTok.

News flash. Sometimes we’re just plain old selfish. Not to sound medieval, but we used to call this ‘sin,’ and no, I’m not an exception, and no, neither are you.

For the men, endless examples of female betrayal: cheating, taking the house, taking the kids, bleeding you dry, bankrupting you, accusing you -- every man’s nightmare -- are trotted out to shove the red pill down your throats. If she’s not milking goats and making sourdough in a sundress she’s probably a slut with an unbelievably high body count. Nevermind the stats, which show we’re actually sleeping around less than we have in 40 years, and most people are more lonely than promiscuous. But don’t worry, guys, you can protect yourself from the evil other half of the human race by bio-hacking. If you develop the kind of discipline it takes to go to the gym and take a bunch of supplements, you don’t need sexual discipline. Take what you like, whether through porn or situationships, but stay cold and ditch them when you’re done. Marriage is a trick designed to destroy you and give all the power to them, which is funny, because that’s what the feminists have been saying to women for the last 50 years. Huh.

Of course, the algorithm forgot that kids exist, which is also weird, since we all were one not so long ago. But don’t worry about that either. If the topic somehow makes its way into your mental map, the algorithm will happily reassure you that kids are resilient; that they actually like it better living in two houses because it’s, like, totally traumatizing to hear people arguing; that single parenthood isn’t just doable but BEAUTIFUL and LEGITIMATE, so much so that there’s no reason not to just to do it on purpose. That way, you don’t even have to deal with the dolt at all! How dare we suggest that kids need a dad or a mom? Are you suggesting that different sexes have different and complementary things to offer their children? Didn’t you get the memo? Biological sex isn’t even real! Don’t worry… watch these videos on the gingerbread person and the algorithm will catch you up on the latest science.

What’s worse is that while the algorithm feeds us this constant stream of poisonous slop, it turns us into the very stereotypes that it warned the opposite sex we were all along. As the stories of her husband’s narcissistic abuse and his wife’s vulturous betrayal multiply, each side retreats further back into its hermeneutic of suspicion toward others paired with self-aggrandizement about themselves. What a mix. So, we live more and more alone, shocked and dismayed by others’ sinfulness but hazy on our own. It’s a recipe, not just for social disaster, but for personal misery.

What’s Missing?

It’s a strange place to land, isn’t it? Somehow both wildly romantic about human nature – that is, the nature of my sex – and yet hopelessly, even despairingly, pessimistic about human nature – that is, the nature of the other sex. While you read this, thinking, “Well? I can’t help it if they’re all jerks!” just recall that the other sex is thinking the exact same thing about you and yours. How could members of the same species experience the same basic life and come to completely opposite conclusions?

Instead of appealing to something specific to each sex (which seems unlikely, since we ended up in the exact same place), I think the missing piece is a theology of suffering. Or maybe just theology in general. We Americans are doing pretty well, materially speaking, especially when we consider how we’re doing relative to others in the world and even more so when we compare ourselves to our ancestors. It’s hard to wrap our pleasure-addled brains around the idea that life is difficult and full of pain, that facing that pain is part of what it is to

gain the virtue of courage, that we don’t all get a rom-com outcome even if we deserve it, and even worse, we probably don’t deserve it.

Even wilder, like the Ninevites in the book of Jonah, most of us “don’t know our right hand from our left”, which is to say, we don’t know the difference between right and wrong anymore. Then when our mindless, impulsive actions hurt others we can’t understand why, so we blame them instead of ourselves. And when they hurt us, we don’t understand their pain and confusion either, so we blame them, leave them, and make sure to declare them unredeemable on our way out. It’s a whole lot of nonsense, but here we are.

A certain slice of our society thinks that all that talk of sin, virtue, our need for God, holiness, and yada yada yada is oppressive and cruel, but notice how backwards that turns out to be. We’re much crueler now, when everyone has an untreatable mental disorder and must be abandoned to protect our peace, than we were back in the boring days of confession and repentance, taking responsibility for our actions, enduring through hardship, bearing one another’s burdens, and other eye-rollingly biblical phrases.

Think of it like taking some kind of gross medicine. It’s hard right now, but when you’re healthy again, it feels great, and you’re glad you did. In the same way, we of the male or female persuasion need to turn our critical attention on ourselves and our compatriots, and spend a bit more time understanding, even appreciating and praising, the other ones. Because the truth is, we can’t build families without each other, or communities, or civilizations.