if you accept my recommendations, you're in love with me
“I take all of your recommendations seriously. I want to know why you like stuff.”
— Gregory Eddie, Abbott Elementary1
if you've ever consume anything i recommend, i will assume you are in love with me. it's not romantic, just intimate; because you didn’t have to. in our hellscape of overconsumption and mental fatigue, you could’ve kept scrolling. you could’ve lied and said “i’ll check it out” and never mentioned it again. people do that all the time.
but you didn’t.
and i think that means something.
attention is its own kind of affection. offering a part of yourself to be met with time and energy. and if i had to rank the top five best feelings in the world, mutual intentionality with another person would at least be number three.
that moment when you share something and they say, “i’ve never heard of this, but i’m learning everything so i can return with points of discussion.”
the simple affection of sending someone your favorite song, and they send back three. not out of obligation, but joy. suddenly you’re trading links like tokens, spiraling into discoveries. it becomes a game of delight, of curiosity, of who can send the thing that impresses the other.
discovery that feels real in a way scrolling never could.
it’s the joy of getting into an ADHD-fueled conversation starting with which is the better franchise: fast & furious or step up? and naturally ends with who’s has the better career: jon m. chu or justin lin2.
and it’s more than just liking the same things. it’s the sense that you’re building something together. feeding the loop. it’s someone being interested in you the same way you’re interested in them. equal effort and curiosity. equal stakes in making the shared experience feel alive. they want to know everything not because they have to, but because they want to.
because you’re worth knowing.
and yea, maybe it’s ego. maybe it’s selfish to want to be explored the way you explore things. but i like to think it’s more than that. because once you’ve felt real enthusiasm, real curiosity, it’s hard to unsee.
you can’t un-know what it feels like to be met in that way.
so when you offer something and get a blank “i don’t get it,” or worse, the dry “oh, that’s cool,” delivered with the energy of someone desperate to get back to their own algorithm, their phone, their curated world of things they already know.
you feel it. how quickly the space between you fills with silence.
you tuck the excitement back inside. the 10-minute monologue you had queued up quietly folds away.
maybe you’ll save it for someone else. maybe you won’t.
you were looking for wonder. for someone to want to know you the way you want to be known. not just to hear that your favorite film is aftersun, but to actually watch it. to want to know why you cried. to see it through your eyes not because they’re trying to impress you, but because they care.
if you ever wondered whether that tiktok someone sent you, the one you already saw two weeks ago, meant something, it did. they weren’t expecting a dissertation, but they wouldn’t be mad if you did.