The Useful Part
Home Videos Categories Sources About Newsletter
Menu
Home Videos Categories Sources About Newsletter
Your browser cannot play this video. Download the MP4.
Behavior

Your Feed Isn't Predicting Your Taste — It's Shaping It

1:09 · 2026-08-10

Recommendation systems don't just mirror existing preferences — through repeated exposure, they make certain content feel familiar, and familiarity itself becomes preference, creating a loop where the feed partly manufa…

The useful part

You still control what you go looking for.

Watch on

  • Instagram
  • Threads
  • TikTok
  • X
  • YouTube

Sources behind this episode

  • peer-reviewed meta-analysisA re-examination of the mere exposure effect: The influence of repeated exposure on recognition, familiarity, and likingMontoya, Horton, Vevea, Citkowicz, Lauber 2017, Psychological Bulletin 143(5), 459-498
  • peer-reviewed monographAttitudinal effects of mere exposureZajonc 1968, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph Supplement 9, 1-27
  • peer-reviewed large-scale experimentExperimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural marketSalganik, Dodds, Watts 2006, Science 311(5762), 854-856
  • peer-reviewed conference paper, simulation studyHow algorithmic confounding in recommendation systems increases homogeneity and decreases utilityChaney, Stewart, Engelhardt 2018, RecSys 18
  • peer-reviewed conference paper, theory and simulationPreference Amplification in Recommender SystemsKalimeris, Bhagat, Kalyanaraman, Weinsberg 2021, KDD 21
  • peer-reviewed experimentEffects of perceptual fluency on affective judgmentsReber, Winkielman, Schwarz 1998, Psychological Science 9(1), 45-48

More in Behavior

How Being Low Maintenance Trains People to Overlook You — video poster frame ▶ 1:07

Behavior

How Being Low Maintenance Trains People to Overlook You

Consistently presenting as low maintenance conditions the people around you to stop checking, offering, or accommodating — not out of neglect, but because you have reliably signaled that nothing is needed.

Why You Check Without Deciding — video poster frame ▶ 1:12

Behavior

Why You Check Without Deciding

Phones are hard to put down because unpredictable rewards condition the act of checking itself; the compulsion lives in the variable-reward schedule, not in any particular piece of content.

How Convenience Becomes Rent — video poster frame ▶ 1:07

Behavior

How Convenience Becomes Rent

Convenience is usually priced as a one-time decision but delivered as an ongoing obligation; the moment you stop owning the capability yourself, you begin renting it indefinitely.

The Useful Part

Mechanism, consequence, and a practical test — in one mobile minute.

Videos Categories Sources About Newsletter

© 2026 The Useful Part. Every episode delivers the whole idea — mechanism, consequence, and a practical test. No padded intros, no multipart cliffhangers.