Gay Sky Pirates

I'm not great at privacy settings; it comes mainly from my mental insistence that nobody really f 'in cares about my personal life amongst the billions out there on the Internet. I'm just a blip on a data sheet somewhere unless I screw up and go viral (which I do work really hard at avoiding).

Therefore Google knows all about me. It knows what I read, what I listen to, what I buy, what I watch, etc. I'm not debating the idiocy of this right now, I just need to explain it before I get to my point.

Having built up its own database of my personal habits Google makes recommendations for me. Usually these include ads for a plethora of geeky objects or Kickstarter campaigns, and I admit it does a pretty good job of picking shiny useless items I neither need nor can help being drawn to anyway.

However the most fun times I have are hitting the "autoplay" button on Youtube and just letting the rabbit hole pull me along.

One day I did this and ended up somehow on a mashup of Lady Gaga/Beyonce's "Telephone" and Alestorm's "Magnetic North", lovingly titled "Magnetic Telephone." You probably recognize at least half of this extremely odd duet. The other half I can only succinctly describe as pirate beard folk metal.

I ended up fascinated by the song as well as curious as to how Google had selected it for me. What on earth would possess it to decide I needed a diva-laden ocean shanty?

That's when it hit me.

...

Google thinks I'm a gay pirate.

And then suddenly everything just felt right. No, I'm not actually a gay pirate by any means; but the phrase conjures up Robert De Niro's character in Stardust and by gods how could you not want Captain Shakespeare as your online spirit guide??

When I started looking at my other recommendations with this new framework it all came together. Absolutely yes - a gay sky pirate (adding "sky" now, in homage to Captain Shakespeare) would need these things in their life!

Things got a bit silly after that. I started thinking before I clicked on links, asking myself, "Would a fabulous gentleman of fortune deem this worthy of their time?" If the answer wasn't a resounding "huzzah!" then nope, I wouldn't proceed.

It's been a few years since this event happened, and I'm not sure whether the AI still feels this is the best summation of my online personality or not.

Either way, I will always hold a place in my heart for this, my true spirit algorithm.