Reprogramming My Facebook Feed (Before It Decides I Need a Reverse Mortgage, a Colonoscopy, and a Prayer Circle)
Lately, my Facebook feed has been acting like a concerned aunt who read one WebMD article and now thinks I’m in crisis.
Every time I open the app, it serves me a sampler platter of: suicide prevention hotlines, domestic abuse resources, PTSD support groups, Cialis ads, retirement communities, RuPaul, Metamucil, reverse mortgages, penile implants, and Cher.
It’s like the algorithm thinks I’m a traumatized, constipated, spiritually exhausted gay elder who’s one bad day away from a pharmaceutical intervention and a senior living brochure. (I really am)
Which… listen, I contain multitudes.
But I’d like to curate which multitudes get advertised back to me.
Here’s the thing: Facebook isn’t diagnosing me. It’s not whispering, “Sweetie, are you okay?”
It’s just reacting to whatever I scroll past, pause on, or accidentally hover over while trying to close a pop‑up. The algorithm doesn’t have intuition — it has vibes. And sometimes those vibes are wildly off.
Furthermore, I know my body is falling so fast that my cats wear hard hats. I don’t need a daily reminder.
So I’ve decided to retrain it.
Not by pretending to be someone else, but by choosing what I want reflected back at me. More humor. More beauty. More creativity. More life. Less doom, fewer medical devices, and absolutely no more ads that begin with “Men over 60…” (The Walking Dead)
A feed that matches the season I’m in now — not the one I barely crawled out of.
A simple 7‑day reset
If you want a structured way to flip your feed, here’s a quick plan:
- Day 1: Hide every depressing or irrelevant post.
- Day 2: Follow 5 pages that make you smile.
- Day 3: Like 10 posts that feel light, funny, or inspiring.
- Day 4: Unfollow 5 people who drain you.
- Day 5: Search for topics you want more of (cycling, cooking, travel, design).
- Day 6: Review your ad preferences and remove categories.
- Day 7: Comment on 3 posts that feel good to you.
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