This article is part of the series:
Advice from a Sister from Another Mother
A collection of honest reflections and practical lessons from a 30-something to her 20-something sisters—about love, self-worth, career, money, and navigating this wild thing called life. Written from the other side of the storm—because I might know a thing or two.
I have been observing myself over the past few weeks, wondering why I get irritated so easily (apart that I might be easily overstimulated too!)
I do write about what excessive screen time does to adults
here. Hey, we're not immune, okay? In fact, with the purchasing power we have,
hours and hours of scrolling through marketplaces completely rewires our social
media algorithm. Suddenly, every platform starts convincing you that maybe,
just maybe, you do need one more organizer, one more kitchen gadget, one more
serum, one more thing to optimize your life.
My husband keeps telling me that I am the ideal candidate
for social media conversion.
The demographics. The purchasing power. Relatively
tech-savvy. Refuses to admit she's FOMO even though... she absolutely is.
(What's the term again? Early majority? I always forget. Somewhere between the
early adopter and mass market part of the adoption curve.)
The irony is almost offensive.
My husband literally runs a business whose backbone depends
on understanding people exactly like me.
Whose wallet is being hunted every single day?
Mine.
Indirectly, by my own husband.
My mom used to call me korban iklan. Back then it was
Corn Flakes and orange Nutrisari commercials where they cut the glass jar and real
orange popped out.
Now I'm no longer an innocent victim.
I know exactly how this machine works.
I've sat through conversations about ad budgets, GMV, ROAS,
A/B testing headlines, retargeting, lookalike audiences, the whole thing of
market place terms (even in my BOD meetings). I know that the ad following me
around isn't fate. Someone paid for that. Someone designed it. Someone measured
whether changing one word could increase conversion by 0.8%.
Knowing the mechanics, however, doesn't make me immune.
If anything, it makes the experience stranger. I can
literally watch myself getting manipulated in real time. "Oh, they're
creating urgency." "Oh, that's artificial scarcity." "Nice,
they're stacking social proof." ...and somehow I still want to click Add
to Cart.
That's the part nobody talks about. We like to believe
awareness equals resistance. It doesn't. Knowing how magic tricks work doesn't
stop your eyes from following the magician's hand.
But lately I've started wondering whether the shopping
itself isn't even the biggest problem. I don't actually buy that much anymore.
What I buy now is attention.
To be clear—my life is good. I'm not lying awake feeling
like I'm missing out on anything real. But that's exactly what makes this so
sneaky: the dissatisfaction the algorithm sells isn't about my actual life
being insufficient. It's manufactured, on a loop, regardless of how good things
already are. A new side lamp, a better planner, a supplement, that thocky
mechanical keyboard so I could enjoy more writing, a course, none of these are
things I need. They're things I'm shown, repeatedly, until "shown"
starts to feel like "missing."
The algorithm doesn't sell products. It sells perpetual
incompleteness. And I think that's where my irritation has been coming from, not
from one annoying ad, not from social media itself, but from spending hours
inside a system designed to whisper that who I am, what I own, and how I live
are all just one purchase away from becoming better. After enough whispers,
even when you don't believe them, your nervous system starts behaving as if you
do.
Maybe that's why I feel calmer on the days I barely touch my
phone. Not because I've become more disciplined, no I haven't. I still open the
marketplace app out of habit before my brain even registers I'm doing it. I
still have to physically put my phone in another room like it's a toddler I
don't trust near the stairs.
I didn't beat the algorithm. I just left the room it was in.
Cheap trick, honestly, but it's the only one that's worked so far not the
willpower, not knowing exactly how the sausage gets made, definitely not me
lecturing myself about gratitude at 1am with seven tabs open.
So. Phone's in the other room right now, actually. We'll see
how long that lasts.
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