manifesting in the age of surveillance capitalism
or a better question: am I magic?
I’m not a witch, but I wouldn’t mind being one. To steal a term from Sam Dylan Finch, I identify as “woo-curious”. I read tarot cards, but see them as a tool for new perspectives and not futuristic psychic insights. I once paid $150 to have my birth chart read. I might be affected by the planets and their celestial dances, but I don’t know when mercury is in retrograde unless I see it on an Instagram astrology account. I would desperately like magic to be real but the closest I have gotten is untouched wilderness and the kindness of other people. And while I have systemic quibbles with the “law of attraction”, I like to think I can manifest good things. But in our era of technological surveillance and information overwhelm, I struggle to differentiate what constitutes “a sign from the universe” versus an algorithm using thousands of data points to successfully steal my attention and influence my decisions.
makes an engaging argument about this in her latest book The Age of Magical Overthinking. In the chapter “I swear I manifested this,” she posits “...I think ‘manifestation’ is often little more than a combination of proportionality bias, confirmation bias, and frequency bias.” In other words, receiving signs from the universe is a delusion stemming from overestimating cause-and-effect relationships, a tendency to favor information that validates existing beliefs, and the phenomenon of noticing something once and then suddenly seeing it everywhere.Here’s an example: Several years ago, I last minute asked a bunch of friends to meet me at the beach for a sunset birthday bonfire. The beach in question only allowed fires in the designated metal fire pits, which were (still are) almost impossible to get. Despite little planning, I remained hopeful that “birthday magic” would save the day. We drive there and get a primo parking spot (birthday magic). We immediately secure a fire pit with an unobstructed mountain view (birthday magic). The clouds cleared up (birthday. magic.). So many friends came and it was a wonderful time with a candy-colored sunset (BIRTHDAY MAGIC).
Reader, I know it wasn’t birthday magic. I know it was just a series of lucky happenstances. But I too fell victim to the pitfalls of manifestation. My birthday is a big deal to me, ergo anything good that happens in May is connected to my birthday (proportionality bias); I want magic to be real and I would like to have some (confirmation bias); and I thought about birthday magic right before a bunch of magical things happened (frequency bias).
There are some more universal and recent examples: “TikTok thinks I’m gay”, “TikTok thinks I have ADHD”, etc. I want to be clear - the visibility social media can provide marginalized communities is a boon of our lifetime, and I am thrilled for anyone who feels like social media & the internet has helped them grow into themselves. But an algorithm can’t change, or even determine, sexual orientation. It can’t diagnose neurodivergence. Rather, these are often further examples of Montell’s biases combo: frequent interactions with related material enforcing a belief about one’s self.
For me, I think this is where the fear of frequency bias comes in. Even knowing a little bit about how algorithms work, how language learning models and AI works, it’s difficult to not question if repetition means something more woo-woo. It didn’t take me long after joining TikTok to text my mom “Do you think I had ADHD as a kid?”, just because I kept seeing videos on my fyp that equated “girls who read a lot and were good at school” with attention disorders. I don’t think I am alone in that.
I have gotten better at being less precious with sharing nebulous hopes and desires in real life. I am lucky to be surrounded by generous people who react with enthusiastic support and interest. That is not true of the internet, or more particularly, proprietary tracking algorithms, which seem to take any half-baked idea and use it to sell me things.
I feel a bit conspiratorial even saying this - I mean, being scared of algorithms stealing info about your life seems like something your QAnon uncle would levy at Thanksgiving dinner. But we know this is how they work. We ingest on average 6,000 - 10,000 ads a day. Private companies triangulate data from phone GPS locations, social media accounts, wifi/Bluetooth connectivity, app use, and online browsing patterns to serve targeted ads optimized to attract. It’s not manifesting, it’s marketing.
There have been times where I am hesitant to type a specific phrase or question into an internet search bar, even with a secure browser & VPN - it’s too precious. I don’t want Meta or Google or Apple or Microsoft knowing something before my best friend or my mom (or myself). When I am trying to sort out my own thoughts or desires, I don’t want to be influenced by external forces whose goal is to steal my attention and my money. It’s hard enough to craft an authentic life without being harassed by the vestiges of a past internet search.
So how to engage with the internet in pursuit of the self? Besides basic cybersecurity measures that kind of alleviate ad tracking, I don’t know. I am still figuring it out. It feels stupid to turn my back on the greatest compilation of human knowledge in known history. But I hate that my quest for self-exploration is manipulated for profit.
This has been especially top of mind as we move into autumn, where a slower pace of life allows more time for reflection and goal planning. I like to think that writing a goal down helps me ✨manifest✨it. And there is something powerful about physically writing something and then making that thing a reality. But what is missed with that lens is all the work and small tasks that go into actually doing shit.
The goal doesn’t happen because I write it down. It happens because I show up and try. That’s the manifesting.
good things on the internet
Rebecca Traister on the women-led grassroots organizing (starting with black women on weekly Zoom calls) that got Kamala Harris on the presidential ticket 🗳️
Sarah Petersen on Taylor Swift breaking trad wives’ brains 👰
Electric Mayhem's Can You Picture That from The Muppet Movie (1979) 🐸
I can’t quite explain why this video of Rich Homie Quan (RIP) and the 2014 Rose Bowl champs Michigan State team makes me so emotional🏈
currently reading
The Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand: The Haunting of Hill House but with queer theater people - the perfect read to welcome in spooky season.
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros: It’s been a while since a book that has been so hyped in pop culture disappointed me so greatly. Huge miss for me. That being said, I will 100% be binging any streaming adaptation because if the dialogue and plot holes are cleaned up, there’s something there. Let’s get the Game of Thrones guys on this?
Hannah Proctor in conversation with Sarah Jaffe for The Baffler:
“The response that people had to the recent fascist riots in England was to come out on the streets to resist. The response to the genocide in Gaza has been to come out and protest. Of course, that’s about trying to stop what’s happening, but it’s also about a need to come out and be with other people because it is too horrific to bear alone. There’s a line in the book from the activist-scholar Aviah Sarah Day saying that every time we reckon with the disposability of people in Palestine we’re also reckoning with how disposable we all are to capital, to the world, to the states that we live in. We are grappling with the fact that it could be us. Going door to door to check on people after a hurricane or buying groceries for a neighbor during the pandemic—it’s all a way of dealing with horrific moments of loss.”
this week’s jam
pairs well with this incredible 2023 Larisha Paul essay on Ribs as the Tumblr generation's teenage existentialism anthem
and why not, let’s do a second jam in memory of Rich Homie Quan and his many contributions to 2010s hip-hop
photo of my cats
