The Algorithm Hates Me

A few days later they met at Tony’s.

The air in Tony’s basement smelled of damp fieldstone foundation, warm vacuum tubes, and stale roast coffee. Overhead, the copper water pipes hung low, wrapped in peeling silver insulation that rattled whenever the furnace kicked on. In the corner by the dryer, a stack of vintage CRT monitors sat bathed in faint magnetic static, their greenish luminescence bleeding across piles of coiled black cables, dented stompboxes, and half-empty coffee mugs.

Cory was hunched behind a drum kit that looked like it had survived three different decades, spinning a splintered 5B stick through his fingers. Across from him, Jonathan leaned back against the rumbling washing machine, cradling a road-worn Fender Precision bass and running his thumb over the low E-string until the speaker cone of his Peavey cabinet buzzed like an angry hornet.

At the center of the concrete floor, under a single bare bulb dangling from an exposed joist, Eddie stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Jessica. Between them were two battered dynamic mics clamped to stands with silver duct tape.

Eddie glanced down at his phone resting face-up on his amplifier chassis. The glass was spiderwebbed from an old drop, the display glowing with an endless trickle of notifications, synthetic bots spamming the replies, and ghost pings that vanished the second he swiped. On his left wrist, Seraph’s golden indicator gave a tight, agitated twitch.

“It’s eating our lunch,” Eddie muttered, shaking his head. “The whole feed is just an echo chamber of plastic faces.”

“Then let’s give it something it can’t digest,” Jessica said, smirking as she kicked the footswitch on her pedalboard.

Cory tapped his sticks together overhead—clack, clack, clack, clack—and the room detonated.

Jonathan locked into a heavy, driving bassline with enough low-end filth to shake loose mortar from the foundation walls. Eddie stepped down on his ratty distortion box; the feedback shrieked, a high-pitched metallic howl that tore through the basement before slamming into a jagged, down-stroked grunge riff.

Jessica leaned her face within an inch of the dented windscreen, trading sharp, staccato lines with Eddie right over the pounding rhythm:

“Dead phone

Black screen

Cheap Hex

Bad dream

Red eyes

No sleep

Everybody’s famous

Everybody’s cheap”

Her voice had that vintage, caustic bite—part riot-grrrl snarl, part cybernetic spell—while Eddie anchored the bottom with a raw, gravel-edged shout.

“I woke up ugly

With a cracked-up face

Saw my whole life dying

On a little glass plate

There were bots in the comments

There were ghosts in the feed

There was one fake angel

Trying hard to look like me

I said, “Show me mercy”

It said, “Try again”

Then it sold my sadness

To a robot friend

There was blood in the browser

There was shame in the light

There were pretty little strangers

Getting paid for the fight

And the screen went white

And the room went black

I screamed into the void

And the void screamed back”

Halfway up the wooden cellar steps, Tony sat with an elbow propped on his knee, holding a cold can of seltzer, a wide grin spreading across his face as the floorboards upstairs vibrated beneath his sneakers.

When the pre-chorus hit, Cory slammed into the open hi-hat, washing the room in brassy noise, and then the chorus erupted like a blown circuit breaker:

“The algorithm hates me

The algorithm hates me

I gave it my soul

And it called me lazy

The algorithm hates me

Pretty little machine

Trying to replace me

Like me

Kill me

Scroll on by

Feed me

Bleed me

Teach me how to die

The algorithm hates me

The algorithm hates me

But I still look good online”

Jessica’s vocal shot straight for the ceiling joists, reckless and fierce, while Eddie barked the counter-melody with everything in his diaphragm. Across the room, Jonathan was digging his pick into the bass strings so hard they clacked against the fret wires, head bobbing in lockstep with Cory’s thunderous kick drum.

Down on the amp, the face of Eddie’s cracked phone started flashing wildly. The bass frequencies were physically vibrating the internal sensors, sending the screen into a stuttering, strobe-like glitch.

Eddie and Jessica grinned at each other through the chaos, trading off lines that named the room itself.

“Jessica said, “Post it”

Tony said, “Don’t”

Cory said, “Burn it”

Jonathan said, “Won’t”

Eddie laughed hard

With a curse in his hand

Said, “Everybody’s haunted

By a marketing plan”

There were filters on the mirror

There were ads in my dreams

There was God in the data

And he sounded obscene

I said, “Am I human?”

It said, “Not enough”

Then it showed me ten boys

Who were hotter and rough

And the bass got sick

And the lights went dead

You said, “Is this the future?”

I said, “No, it’s a thread”

The algorithm hates me

Pretty little machine

Trying to replace me

But I still look good online”

The bridge stripped the groove right down to the bone. Cory killed the cymbals, pounding out a relentless tribal stomp on the floor tom while Jonathan kept the bassline crawling like a worm through wet dirt. Eddie and Jessica leaned together into the shared mic, delivering an incantation for the internet age—blessing the glitches, the spam bots, the manufactured validation, and the hollow gods ruling the digital expanse with polished, predatory smiles.

“Bless the glitch

Bless the spam

Bless the bot

That thinks I am

Bless the likes

Bless the lies

Bless the tears

Behind my eyes

No reach

No fame

Just a dead little heart

With a username

No sleep

No peace

Just a robot god

With perfect teeth

Swipe left

Stare right

Pray to the feed

Every night”

With a roar from Cory, the track broke into full basement pandemonium. Eddie threw himself into a wild, screeching guitar solo, yanking the neck until the strings whined in protest, intentionally feeding the pickups right into the front grille of the cabinet.

“Now the phone keeps buzzing

Like a bug in my skull

And my face feels fake

And my blood feels dull

There’s a curse in the camera

There’s a spell in the app

There’s a boy on the timeline

Who never looks back

I should throw it out

I should go touch grass

But the screen says, “Baby

You’ll never last”

So turn up the feedback

Let the whole feed crash

Cheap Hex is trending

In the digital trash

The algorithm hates me

The algorithm hates me

Everybody’s dead

But everybody’s fine

Dead phone

Black screen

Cheap Hex

Bad dream

Red eyes

No sleep

The algorithm hates me

But I’m still on the feed”

Jessica screamed the final hook into the redline, her voice cracking with pure cathartic joy.

On the final downbeat, Cory hit every cymbal on the stand at once. Jonathan slid his hand down the entire length of the fretboard with a deafening rumble, and Eddie stomped the kill switch, leaving only a low, howling wave of uncontrolled amp hum floating through the cold basement air.

For three seconds, nobody moved. The furnace hummed. Sweat dripped from the tip of Eddie’s nose onto the concrete.

Jessica threw her head back, gasping for breath, laughing through her teeth. “Tell me the algorithm caught that.”

Tony took a sip from his can, pointed down at them from the third step, and called out over the ringing in their ears: “Do that exact same thing again. Just don't knock my hot water heater off the wall this time.”

Eddie went home with his ears ringing. Later that week he logged on.