If you need your feed, you're not a critical thinker

Everyone is a critical thinker until you see their feed.

We live in a secular age. We might not believe in oracles but we say we believe in data, evidence, and forming our own opinions. And yet. Scrolling through your feed you'll notice how eerily it knows you. The right video. The right take. The right moment. A recommendation, but more like a message.

Researchers have a name for this. Cotter et al. call it algorithmic conspirituality — the phenomenon where people don't just consume algorithmically curated content, they attribute cosmic significance to it. Serendipity becomes sign. Coincidence becomes fate. The FYP becomes God.

Serendipity becomes sign. Coincidence becomes fate. The FYP becomes God.

Their study documents TikTok creators posting videos with no hashtags, no captions, and stripped of any algorithmic signal telling viewers: "If you're seeing this, it was meant for you." And audiences believe it!

This is what concerns me. Not the algorithm. The theology of it.

My own MSc dissertation research on how political commentators are shaped by the platforms they operate on has surfaced something similar. It's not just that algorithms curate what we see. They shape how we think. They narrow the frame. They amplify what already resonates. Commentators who believe they're forging independent analysis are often, in practice, iterating on what their feed has already validated.

The platform is now the priest. Your scroll is your scripture. This irony is deep: the more we identify as free thinkers, the more invisible this capture becomes. Evangelism doesn't seem to require religion as it just requires a feed you've stopped questioning and are all-in on.

Algorithmic conspirituality isn't fringe behaviour to dismiss or put in the box for now. You can see it's the background hum of how millions of people now make sense of the world and formulate their worldviews... one eerily well-timed post at a time.

A question worth sitting with for all of us: When did you last encounter a perspective your algorithm didn't send you?

Reminder: you can join my presale list for my book here.