In a 2017 Meet the Press interview on NBC News, Kellyanne Conway—then serving as counselor to President Trump, uttered two words that reverberated across the country: “alternative facts.” With that phrase, falsehoods were no longer something to correct, they were something to reframe. Not wrong, just different. Not untrue, just another version of reality.

Nine years later, I think about that moment more often than I’d like to admit. Because what once felt like a political deflection now feels like the operating system of the internet.

I notice it when I open my phone. My feed feels coherent, almost too coherent. The opinions line up and the tone is scarily familiar. The content confirms more than it challenges. But then I’m reminded: this isn’t the internet. This is my internet. Someone else’s feed, someone my age, in my city, could look entirely different. We are scrolling through parallel worlds, each one optimized to feel complete.

That is not accidental. That is by design.

The more time we spend engaging with a certain type of content, the more we are shown. Not just more of the same, but more extreme, more emotionally charged, more definitive. These systems are designed to hold our attention, and the easiest way to do that is to give us content that feels right. Content that affirms who we are, what we believe, and how we see the world.