My Twitter (I Refuse to Call It X) Algorithm Is Suddenly Just Abs
Is it my fault?
Lately — I think lately — during my compulsory scrolls through the choppy waters of Twitter, my account is littered with selfies of shirtless men, a phone annexed to an arm that’s at once holding the camera and serving a greater function: that of accessorizing the abs, pecs, flanks and traps (who could forget the traps!) with delts, bis and tris.
Sometimes it's accompanied with a knowingly ironic-ish caption (much like the Barbie movie lobbed off criticism of Mattel): “Oh look, another gay posting another selfie on this hellscape of an app,” or the latest, the “2018/2023” photo comparison that has me Googling the name of the actress that delivered the iconic “they're so different” line from The Devil Wears Prada. (Her name is Rebecca Mader.)
I tend to stop scrolling and zoom, sometimes with a vague but fleeting “that’s hot!” in my mind but never uttered, but often a louder thought: “Who is that?” Then — with Steve Urkel’s famous saying ricocheting through my brain — “Did I do that?” Because lately more than ever, mixed in with my PopCrave tweets about so and so looking stunning and people retweeting cringey 2011 Katy Perry tweets, is a constant flow of men I’ve never before met — or even know — with bodies I suppose could be categorized as enviable and mirrors that have never known the joys of Windex.