The ‘For You’ Page: Are You Even Real Anymore?

It’s Saturday morning in Ontario. You wake up not to the gentle chirping of a real, live bird, but to the digital siren song of your phone, which has been dutifully charging on your nightstand like a loyal, rectangular dog. You blink, your thumb performs its sacred muscle-memory dance, and boom: you’re home. You’re on the ‘For You’ page.

The next ten minutes are a blur. You see a golden retriever attempting to bake a cake. You see a hyper-specific meme about the OC Transpo that makes you snort-laugh. You see a tutorial on how to turn old poutine containers into artisanal plant pots. Then, the algorithm serves you the ace: a clip of an AI-generated Morgan Freeman calmly explaining the lore of a niche video game you played for three hours back in 2023.

A cold dread, colder than a skate on the Rideau Canal in January, washes over you. It’s a thought so profound, so terrifying, it almost makes you drop your phone.

How does it know?

And the follow-up question, which is infinitely worse: Is it just showing me what I like, or is it teaching me what to like?Am I a unique individual discovering content, or am I just a walking, talking mood board being assembled, piece by piece, by a line of code in California?

Welcome, friend, to the existential crisis of 2025. It’s the grand philosophical problem of our age: Algorithmic Authenticity. We’re all trying to “be ourselves,” but we’re doing it in a world where a powerful, invisible force is constantly trying to predict, package, and sell a version of “us” back to ourselves. Are you really you? Or are you just the person your algorithm thinks you are?

Shout Out to Jean-Paul Sartre, the Original Emo Kid

Once upon a time, being “authentic” was a much simpler, if more dramatic, affair. You’d go to Paris, put on a black turtleneck, smoke moodily in a café, and have intense conversations about the crushing meaninglessness of existence. This was the playbook of the existentialists, and their frontman was Jean-Paul Sartre.

Sartre’s big idea was “existence precedes essence.” This is a fancy way of saying you’re not born with a pre-installed personality or purpose (that’s your “essence”). You’re just… born. You exist. You’re a blank canvas, a formless blob of potential. It’s only through the choices you make—what you do, who you love, what you fight for—that you create your own essence. Being authentic, for Sartre, meant courageously owning those choices and not blaming your personality on your parents, your zodiac sign, or society.

It’s a beautiful, empowering idea. It’s also an idea that Sartre came up with before anyone had to worry about their essence being A/B tested by a TikTok content strategy. Being a blank canvas is a lot harder when an algorithm is standing right behind you, helpfully suggesting, “You know, you look like someone who’d really be into niche historical reenactments. Here are 700 videos about it.”

Enter the Algorithm: Your New Life Coach / Creepy Stalker

Let’s be real about how these recommendation engines work. They are the most powerful pattern-recognition machines ever built. They watch what you watch, what you skip, how long you linger on a photo, who you follow, and who you block. They take all this data and build a spooky-accurate digital ghost of you. Then, their job is to feed that ghost.

But it’s not just feeding. It’s shaping.

Think about the aesthetic trends that explode out of nowhere. One day you’ve never heard of “cottagecore,” and the next, after liking one video of a rustic-looking pie, your entire feed is a flood of linen aprons, wildflower gardens, and people who seem to have a Ph.D. in canning. Suddenly, you find yourself at a Winners in Barrhaven wondering if you could pull off a bonnet.

Did you, an independent being, consciously decide to explore a pastoral lifestyle? Or did you dip a single toe into the cottagecore waters, and the algorithm, seeing its chance, shoved you in headfirst and yelled, “THIS IS YOU NOW! BAKE THE BREAD! FROLIC, DAMN YOU!”?

This is where things get philosophically sticky. In 2025, AI doesn’t just show us things. It helps us write our emails, it suggests witty replies to our friends’ texts, it polishes our resumes, and it can even generate a plausible-sounding dating profile based on our Browse history. The line between you and your digital co-pilot is getting blurrier than a poutine photo taken after midnight on Elgin Street.

Your Life: Now Sponsored by You

This algorithmic pressure cooker creates another modern problem: the performance of the self. We’re not just living; we’re curating. We’re all the unpaid, perpetually stressed-out social media managers of our own “personal brand.”

Your online presence becomes a carefully crafted museum exhibit of You. You post the photo from the top of the Gatineau Park trail, but not the one of you wheezing halfway up, covered in mosquito bites. You post the perfectly browned homemade pizza, not the first three attempts that looked like burnt, cheesy tragedies. You are performing a version of yourself for an audience, and the algorithm is the judge.

This creates a dangerous feedback loop. You post something that fits your “brand” (e.g., “outdoorsy and fun-loving”). The algorithm rewards it with likes and engagement. Your brain gets a nice little dopamine cookie. So, you post more of that same kind of content. Lather, rinse, repeat.

After a while, you have to ask: Are you still an authentic person who happens to like hiking? Or are you now playing the character of a hiker because it gets good numbers? The pressure to be consistent for your “brand” can slowly override your freedom to be a messy, inconsistent human being.

Okay, But It Did Help Me Find That Perfect Recipe for Vegan Poutine

Now, before we all throw our phones into the Ottawa River and go live in a cabin with no Wi-Fi, let’s be fair. It’s not all a dystopian nightmare. The algorithm can be… good?

This hyper-personalization is incredible for finding your tribe. If you’re a 22-year-old in Kanata who is obsessed with 1970s Polish sci-fi posters, good luck finding your people at the local community centre. But online? The algorithm will serve you up a thriving global community in seconds. For people with niche interests or identities, this can be a life-changing source of connection and validation. It can make a big, lonely world feel a little smaller and more welcoming.

It’s also an engine of discovery. It’s shown me music I now love, taught me how to fix a leaky faucet, and exposed me to political ideas I would have never encountered otherwise. It’s a powerful tool. But that’s the point. It’s a tool. And right now, most of us aren't using the tool; we're letting the tool use us.

How to Glitch the Matrix of Your Own Mind: A Goofy Guide to Digital Self-Defense

So how do we fight back? How do we stay authentic in a world that wants to turn us into a predictable data point? We can’t escape the game, but we can learn to play it on our own terms.

1. Go on a ‘Weird Shit’ Binge. The algorithm wants to put you in a box. Your job is to be as un-box-able as possible. Once a week, intentionally confuse it. Spend an hour watching tutorials on competitive dog grooming. Like three videos about tectonic plates. Search for “the history of the spork.” Keep the algorithm guessing. If it doesn’t know who you are, it can’t tell you who to be.

2. Schedule an Analog Interlude. Go do something that is aggressively un-Instagrammable. Sit on a bench and just stare at a tree for ten minutes without documenting it. Read a physical book with a torn cover. Have a conversation with a friend with your phones in another room. The goal is to have experiences that are for you, not for your "personal brand" exhibit.

3. Ask the Hard Question: “Is This a ‘Me’ Desire?” The next time you feel an intense urge to buy that viral colour-changing hydro-flask, or adopt the latest slang you saw online, just pause. Ask yourself: “Where did this desire come from? Did it bubble up from within me, or was it planted in my brain five scrolls ago?” You don’t have to resist it, but just being aware of the source is a powerful act of defiance.

4. Embrace the Cringe. Authenticity isn’t about being cool, flawless, or interesting. It’s about being whole. And being whole means being a little bit cringey sometimes. Post the blurry photo. Tell the bad joke. Admit you don't understand the hype around the new hit show. Your true self is probably a bit of a weirdo. Let that weirdo have some air.

5. Talk to a Real, Live Human. Revolutionary, I know. Have a face-to-face conversation about something other than what you saw online. Ask them what they’re really thinking and feeling. The messy, unedited, unpredictable nature of real human connection is the ultimate antidote to algorithmic curation.

So, Are We Real?

Living in 2025 means being in a constant, weird negotiation between our own evolving selves and the powerful technological forces that are trying to pin us down. Being “authentic” is no longer a solo project. It’s a collaboration, and sometimes a fight.

The algorithm is a mirror, but it's a funhouse mirror. It shows you a reflection that is part you, and part what it wants you to be. The trick is to never forget that you're the one holding the mirror. You can choose to believe its distorted image, or you can choose to laugh at it, put it down, and walk away.

You are the curator of the beautiful, bizarre, and slightly-cringey museum of you. Just make sure you’re the one deciding what goes on display.