Mirror, mirror on the screen, “Wherein can I find me?”: On the sublime qualities of AI recommendation systems, algorithm conformity, and the else

Algorithmic persuasion is a mode of organizing that happens through inducing experiences that covertly seek to influence behavior by presenting an ongoing stream of affective recommendations. This essay advances the thesis that this mode of algorithmic organizing has the capacity to affect individuals’ sense of their self and explores how and why this may happen. It suggests that individuals may be susceptible to experiencing AI recommendation systems as sublime. Their sublime qualities give normative force to their recommendations and, through them, appeal to one’s affective drives, fears, and hopes, revealing who or what one is or may become. This subjecting of one’s self to these recommendations warrants two critical observations: a behavioral preference we call “people-like-you” and the emergence of “algorithm conformity” as an organizing force. Yet, there can be epistemic corruption in the recommendations. This epistemic corruption is the else, whose experience can evoke uncanny feelings and carries with it the possibility to break the spell of the sublime and to escape and resist algorithm conformity.