Here's something I want you to actually sit with for a second.

Think about the last ten things you saved, liked, or shared on any platform. How many of them did you go looking for — and how many just... showed up? Be honest.

Because for most of us, the answer is that almost everything just showed up. The algorithm surfaced it, we engaged, and the algorithm said "oh cool, more of this then." And that loop has been running for years. At some point the things it keeps showing you start to feel like your taste. Your interests. Your professional identity, even.

But here's the part that's been keeping me up at night (okay not literally, but close): there's a version of who you are professionally that was partly built by a recommendation engine. And you might not be able to tell which parts are actually yours and which parts were just... assigned to you. That's kind of a wild thing to sit with when you're in the phase of your career where you're still figuring out what you want to be known for.

I've been reading research on how early-to-mid career professionals build their sense of self online. And the finding that keeps jumping out at me is this: whether someone scrolls intentionally or passively? Not really the thing that matters. What matters is whether they have the skills and self-awareness to make their digital presence work with their career instead of just happening to them.

And the studies back this up in a way I find genuinely fascinating (stay with me here).

Journalists in one study felt trapped by their old posts — stuff they'd shared before they were professionals, suddenly carrying professional weight nobody intended. And their response wasn't to curate better or clean up their feeds. It was to go quiet. Retreat into DMs. Stop sharing opinions entirely. Not because they had nothing to say! But because they didn't know how to manage the gap between who they used to be online and who they were becoming.

Meanwhile, health professionals in a completely different study had the opposite experience. They'd been taught to think about their digital identity as part of their professional development — not as a separate thing to manage defensively, but as something to build intentionally alongside their careers. And it worked. Their digital presence grew with them instead of against them.

Same platforms. Same algorithms. Totally different outcomes.

And the main difference wasn't the amount of scrolling either group was doing, but in their skillset.

And I think (this is the part where I get a little opinionated) a lot of us are closer to the journalists than we'd like to admit. Not trapped, exactly, but on autopilot. Letting the feed shape what we think we care about. Letting whatever's algorithmically popular define what "good career content" looks like. And then wondering why it all feels slightly off — like we're performing someone else's version of professional.

There's a set of skills underneath all of this that nobody really teaches you. How algorithms actually work. How different platforms shape what you end up valuing. How to tell the difference between "I chose this" and "this was chosen for me." How to build a digital presence that reflects who you're becoming, not just who you've been.

Over the next four weeks, I'm going to break this down — from the authenticity trap of performing a professional identity that isn't yours, to choosing platforms strategically, to building an online presence that actually grows with you instead of pinning you to a past version of yourself.

We're starting here because this is the question that makes everything else click: do you actually know which parts of your professional identity are yours?

Let's find out together.

Talk soon,

Tamilore

P.S. You can find the study here

Threads just rolled out a feature called "Dear Algo" — you literally write a public post that starts with "Dear Algo, show me more [thing]" or "Dear Algo, less [thing]" and the platform adjusts your feed for three days.

It started as a meme. People were writing these posts as a joke, yelling into the void about their terrible recommendations. And then Meta... made it an actual feature.

Here's what I think is interesting: it's a platform basically admitting that the algorithm isn't giving you what you want — it's giving you what keeps you scrolling. And those aren't the same thing.

But it also made me wonder — if someone handed you the controls to your feed right now, would you know what to ask for? Like, could you actually articulate what you want to see more of? Try it and see.

Remember: always do your own research and take your time with applications. You got this!