The Algorithm Thinks I’m a Victorian Philosopher

Every few days, my inbox receives a small miracle of misplaced confidence: an email addressed to James Allen, author of As a Man Thinketh, published in 1903 — nine years before the gentleman in question died, and roughly a century before I started writing anything more ambitious than a grocery list and a strongly worded note about cat food.

Had the sender read the book — or even glanced sideways at the copyright page — they might have noticed the minor chronological hiccup. But no. A name match is apparently all the modern marketing ecosystem requires to declare a strategic partnership.

Somewhere, an algorithm squints at two identical names and says,

“Close enough. Fire the cannons.”

The pitch is always the same, delivered with the bright, unwavering confidence of someone who has never once been wrong on the internet:

Which is corporate dialect for: I did not read your previous email, but I am emotionally committed to pretending I did.

Sometimes it’s the slightly more athletic:

“I didn’t hear from you.”

This is a bold opening move, considering they absolutely did hear from me — unless their inbox is being managed by the same people who lose socks in the dryer.

And then, on rare and wondrous occasions, we get the wounded tone — the subtle suggestion that my lack of enthusiasm is personally inconveniencing their quarterly goals.

Friend, I regret to inform you that your spreadsheet and I are not in a relationship.

A few times — after the third or fourth cheerful re-intrusion — I have gone full Midwest blunt. Not rude. Not hostile. Just… farm-grade clear:

This interaction is concluded. Please do not reach out again.

It is the digital equivalent of setting down your coffee, making steady eye contact across a folding table, and saying, “Nope.”

Firm. Polite. Final enough that even the raccoons understand the lid is back on the trash can.

What fascinates me, though, isn’t the nuisance.

It’s the optimism.

Somewhere, right now, a system is happily churning out emails based on nothing more than a name match, fully convinced that if it throws enough polite enthusiasm at the internet, eventually someone will mistake it for relevance.

It is marketing by horoscope:

vague, persistent, and wrong in ways that feel oddly personal.

You can almost admire the purity of the approach. No research. No context. Just vibes and volume.

And yet — and this is the part that makes me smile into my porch coffee — there is something strangely reassuring about the whole circus.

Because for all our talk of artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, machine learning, and data-driven everything…

Human error remains undefeated.

Somewhere, a workflow is still duct-taped together with optimism and a mailing list from 2017. Somewhere, a well-meaning marketer is still clicking 

Send and hoping the void writes back.

And every few days, the void forwards the message to me.