Think you're special? You're normal (video)

Oliver Burkeman (Guardian, May 4, 2018); Seth Auberon, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly
(Far East Movement) I'm "The Illest" in this boring office, proving that I'm as special as Riff Raff!

I'm on meds b'cuz I'm the illest - Kanye West

Among the creepier experiences of modern life is one that happens to me, though definitely not just me, on a regular basis: I’ll meet a friend for a [chat], he’ll recommend some book or film or product he thinks I’ll like, and then, within days -- without searching for it online -- I’ll start seeing targeted Web ads for it.

No wonder...Facebook uses the microphone in our phones to eavesdrop on our conversations. That’s almost certainly [true]: [but] apps and websites already vacuum up so much of your data, they’ve no need for such schemes; it just feels that they must be eavesdropping.

"Look At Me Now" Them rappers be the most uniquest of all peoples because they can do choreographed dance moves and sing: Busta Rhymes, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown...

Kanye thinks he is, but I AM. I'm special.

But there’s another reason Big Tech knows us so much better than we think, which is that each of us is far more "normal" [statistically average] than we realize.

 

Given a little information about me, both Facebook and my friend alight on the same recommendation because my constellation of interests is far less special, and thus more predictable, than I’d like to believe.

 

Headline anxiety? Delay reading

“You’re not so special” is a message sometimes delivered as an insult (as in “special snowflake”) and sometimes as tough love.

This happens in the viral 2012 speech by the American high-school teacher David McCullough, urging students not to make themselves miserable by struggling to prove they’re the center of the universe.

It’s also frequently an accusation flung at the youth by the old.

But all that’s really just a distraction from the brute statistical fact: on any given dimension, all else being equal, of course you’re probably normal. Shorn of any value judgment, that’s all the word “normal” means. More

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