by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Yesterday, I was listening to “Born in The USA” by Bruce Springsteen on Spotify and for a moment, I weighed the significance of the song in American politics over the years.
Well, guess what — just now I was using Tik-Tok and, lo and behold I was pushed a video that posed that very same question: “Is Born In The USA a patriotic song?”
Spooky.
Now, the case can be made that this one is pretty easy — Tik-Tok simply monitored my listening to Springsteen in general and pushed that particular video for that reason. What makes this spooky is that the video itself was about the specific thing I thought about, literally.
But, as always, I’m reluctant to believe that Tik-Tok can literally read my mind. In this specific instance there is a non-kooky explanation — Tik-Tok knew in general that I was listening to Bruce on Spotify and it just so happened that the video about him was about the very subject I listened to. The nature of Born In The USA is pretty mainsteam.
It’s still pretty spooky and intrusive, no matter how Tik-Tok figured it out.
