Back in school, “algorithm” was the word that stood between me and my dream of Arts/Law. Now it’s the invisible force deciding what appears in my social-media feed. Turns out the maths I once feared has followed me — with a sense of humour.
If you’d told me back in high school maths that one day I’d be voluntarily talking about algorithms, I’d have laughed (or possibly cried).
Back then, “algorithm” meant a set of steps you had to memorise, the difference between passing and finding a whole new life plan. Mathematics was never my forte, and the thought of tripping over a missing x was enough to keep me up at night. It was the subject that would decide whether I made it into Arts/Law or had to find something else to do.
And in the end, I’m rather grateful to say mathematics did, in fact, let me down.
Because that “something else” turned out to be storytelling, and there’s far more humanity in that than in any quadratic equation. Still, I can’t help noticing that those same mysterious “sets of steps” I once dreaded have followed me all the way into adulthood, disguised in a new form: social-media algorithms.
These modern descendants of my old nemesis no longer live in textbooks. They live in my phone, deciding whether I see my besties’ social life, someone else’s new litter of border collies, a wombat rescue video, or an ad for something I swear I only thought about but never searched.
They’ve taken the old maths problem – find x – and replaced it with find Lynne.
Somewhere inside that invisible equation it probably reads:
Engagement = (Time × Emotion × Ads Seen) ÷ Willpower
And it’s definitely winning.
But I’ve decided not to resent the algorithm. It’s not evil, it’s obedient.
It’s simply doing what it was built to do: predict what keeps me scrolling.
The trick is to feed it wisely.
If I linger on outrage, it serves me outrage.
If I linger on kindness, it serves me more of that.
So perhaps I’ve finally found my kind of maths after all.
A simple human equation that even I can live by:
Joy = (Time spent offline × Actual friends) + (Laughter ÷ Comparisons)
It may not get me into Arts/Law, but it’s a pretty good formula for life.
#Algorithms #SocialMedia #MathsHumour #DigitalLife #Storytelling #AttentionEconomy #JoyEquation
