Social media algorithms are famously “black boxes” that prioritize what content a user sees in ways that can sometimes be confounding. But one married man has figured out how to make his Instagram feed more faithful to his real-life interests, which include his wife.
Lauren Cullen (@laurenncullen) films her husband demonstrating how he customized his Instagram algorithm to show him content about his favorite sports teams, musicians, and hobbies. He filters out only one category: women.
The video opens with a close-up of the man’s iPhone as he navigates Instagram settings.
“Alright, so I learned how to do this the other day. Uh, not the biggest internet person, but I learned about this,” he says, opening Instagram’s “Your Algorithm” feature.
Under “What you would like to see more of,” the man has assembled a list of interests including the Philadelphia Flyers, John Mayer, hockey, Porsche, Fender guitars, Omega watches, and rock and roll, among others.
“So I learned how to set my algorithm and I put things that I like,” he says. “The Flyers. Why would you not?”
The one thing he lists in the “What you want to see less of” section is women.
The camera flips to the husband, who is sitting in what appears to be a restaurant. He looks dead into the camera and earnestly says, “I have a wife who I love,” before shrugging. “I don’t want to see other women. No, not interested. Thanks.”
The TikTok’s text overlay sums up his stance: “POV: Your husband set his algorithm to show him ‘no women.’” The video has more than 700,000 views.
‘Now He’s Just Gonna Get Red Pill Vids’
Many users applauded Cullen’s husband, with one commenter writing, “oh to be truly loved … nobody had to force him either.”
Another said, “Biggest green flag.” A third added, “You’ve got a good one, bless you!”
But others questioned the type of content the platform might start prioritizing as a result. One viewer noted, “Now he’s just gonna get red pill vids.” A second agreed: “Yea but isn’t this just going to push red pill content? ??”
For those blissfully unaware, “red pill” content “educates men on how to live optimally under a gynocentric world which favors women and disadvantages men,” according to UCLA’s student-run political journal, the Bruin Political Review.
This sort of content “often leads to misogynistic, anti-feminist, and right-wing ideologies,” which is alarming when you consider that nearly two-thirds of young men “regularly engage with men and masculinity influencers.”
Obviously, this doesn’t mean that Cullen’s husband will immediately be served up alt-right content, but the speed at which this can happen should not be underestimated.
In 2024, researchers at University College London and the University of Kent found “a fourfold increase in the level of misogynistic content” on TikTok specifically after just five days of monitoring, with the algorithm privileging “more extreme material” as time went on.
Can You Really Block Women From Your Instagram Feed?
Instagram users have several ways of influencing what they see on their feeds, including marking individual posts “Not Interested” and interacting more frequently with content they’d like to see more of.
The platform’s “Your Algorithm” feature, which Cullen’s husband demonstrated in the TikTok video, gives you a bit more control when it comes to customization by letting you opt in and out of certain topics.
But adding “women” to the list of topics you’d like to see less of doesn’t automatically mean you stop seeing women on Instagram altogether. According to Meta, Instagram’s parent company, the “Your Algorithm” feature allows you to “make adjustments to the topics you want to see more or less of,” and the platform will show you more of “the topics Instagram thinks you’re into” based on what you’ve interacted with.
So adding “women” to the “What you want to see less of” section may reduce the amount of content featuring women, but it won’t block a person from seeing all content featuring women.
This is where the “black box” comes in; “topics Instagram thinks you’re into” is a fairly nebulous criterion for determining what you see on your feed.
Still, Meta does offer some insight into why Instagram users see the content they see in their feeds, Reels, and searches, though it’s pretty self-evident.
The company’s AI recommendation systems gather and analyze a bunch of signals, including what sorts of accounts a user follows as well as what types of posts they like, share, save, and spend time watching. Then they recommend similar content based on that data.
@laurenncullen
Subplot News reached out to Cullen via email.
