Women and Algorithms

All I wanted to know was how to get rid of mould in my bathroom. But the YouTube algorithm brought me into a world optimised cleaning and 1950s gender roles.

The Miracle Morning is all the rage among female internet users. Too much work? No worries! Get up at 5 in the morning, and you'll magically have time for your yoga, your healthy breakfast and your perfectly tidy house. But that flurry of superhuman productivity hides an obvious truth: the unequal division of domestic labour, in which women must somehow transcend the space-time continuum just to keep up.

Dear Diary, at first, writing in you was just about getting better organised. Creating a personalised journal to cure for my mental overload. But then it spiralled out of control, with illustrations and stickers imported from the other side of the world. I found myself spending more time decorating you than replying to emails, and tracking my sleep instead of actually sleeping. Oh, my lovely, labour-intensive, bullet journal... I might have to bite the bullet and quit.

On YouTube, there are plenty of life hacks for everyday living, including tips on leading a more eco-friendly lifestyle. That's how female internet users started monitoring their electricity consumption and the weight of their waste. But women are now crumbling under the labour of making everything from scratch.

Did you know that you can get a perm for your eyelashes, have your under-eye circles injected away, and get your lips tattooed? Female social media spaces are driving new cosmetic treatments and 'improvements', with an underlying message: it's no longer enough to be young and pretty, you have to be pretty perfect.