Eulogy For The Algorithm

You died and the feed kept scrolling someone posted a sunset in Jeju someone posted their new Kakao Friends order someone posted a quote about resilience attributed to no one in particular the algorithm curated its indifference into a perfectly personalized stream of everything that wasn't you Your profile is still there the last post still up: October 3rd a photo of Cheonggyecheon at dusk forty-seven likes you'll never see the comment section still open for business, for business, for business the platform doesn't have a setting for when the account owner has become past tense You died and I didn't post anything I opened the app nine times I typed three different things and deleted all three my silence was louder than any post my silence was the only honest thing the feed received that day and the algorithm didn't know what to do with it so it gave me a sponsored ad for coffee delivery You died and the feed kept scrolling my silence was louder than any post the algorithm read my grief as absence and filled the absence with suggestions people you may know memories from this day two years ago trending now in Korea trending now in Korea you died and the feed kept scrolling my silence was louder my silence was louder than any post The Melon algorithm is mourning you in its own way, if you can call it that: it keeps recommending your songs to the people who listened once the way you spread through the data like a stain in clean water like a frequency that persists after the source is gone I keep getting ads for things you'd have wanted the platform has studied you so well it can predict your desire from beyond the date of your last active the data portrait is more present than half the people still updating and I find this unbearable and I find this accurate You died and I didn't post anything I opened the app nine times nine times the app offered me the opportunity to share the opportunity to engage with a community that would understand the algorithm called it: under-posting the algorithm called it: churn risk the algorithm doesn't have a word for standing at a railing at midnight and stepping off You died and the feed kept scrolling my silence was louder than any post the algorithm read my grief as absence and filled the absence with suggestions people you may know memories from this day two years ago trending now in Korea trending now in Korea you died and the feed kept scrolling my silence was louder my silence was louder than any post I want to file a complaint with the department responsible for continuing I want to find the server farm south of Bundang where your voice note lives in a rack of drives drawing power from the grid and I want to say: she was a person not a user not a listener not a demographic not a re-engagement opportunity not a memory prompt for the people she left with too much stored in their caches The platform will archive the account after a period of inactivity defined by terms of service that she did not have time to update the account will become a memorial pending verification of death pending next of kin pending three to five business days for a form submitted online through the portal that that that keeps routing me back to the homepage You died and the feed kept scrolling my silence was louder than any post I am dancing in a basement in Hongdae with forty people who knew you and none of us posted anything and the algorithm noted our silence and served us grief-adjacent content and kept and kept and kept Trending now in Korea: you in the one place data can't go trending in the room where the living keep the dead in their bodies keep moving keep the feed kept scrolling the feed kept scrolling the feed—