I do not know what I clicked. I do not know what I searched. All I know is that one day my feed decided I was a divorced forty-eight-year-old man who spends his weekends polishing a bass boat and arguing about marine fuel efficiency.
Every platform joined in. Instagram showed me pictures of pontoon decks and yacht interiors. YouTube started pushing videos of guys named Ron explaining how to tie nautical knots. Facebook tried to sell me boat insurance. I have never owned a boat. I have never been on a boat that was not a ferry. Yet the machine is convinced this is my destiny.
It is not just the boats. Once the algorithm decided I was Boat Guy, it started filling in the rest of my fake life. Ads for cargo shorts with too many pockets. “Luxury” coolers that cost more than rent. Country music playlists called “Freedom Water.” The image is so complete I could probably walk into a marina tomorrow and someone would hand me a captain’s hat.
This is how you know the algorithm is not reading your mind. It is building one for you. It decides who you are, then shoves that identity into your eyes until you either give in or go insane. That is why every man over forty suddenly gets golf ads, every woman in her thirties gets skincare products, and every teenager gets energy drinks and cheap headphones. The internet is not a mirror. It is a sales floor.
The part that scares me is how confident it is. I have scrolled past every boat post. I have not clicked a single one. But they keep coming. The system does not care about my actual preferences. It has a version of me that it wants to sell to, and that version apparently spends every spare dollar on outboard motors.
At some point I started watching just to see what it would do next. Big mistake. The second I let a boat video play for more than three seconds, it was over. My entire homepage became a digital marina. Boat reviews. Boat tours. Boat maintenance tips. Boat accessories. My online life is now a place where the only thing that matters is how fast you can get from dock to open water.
And the worst part? I am starting to learn things. I know which brands have the best resale value. I know that fiberglass hulls require less maintenance than wood. I am slowly becoming the very person the algorithm decided I was. Which makes me wonder how much of anyone’s personality is just marketing that finally wore them down.
If one day I disappear, check the nearest harbor. I will be the guy in the captain’s hat, explaining to strangers how the algorithm got me here.