Chapter 37: Data.

Once I had set up everything and spread my character over the data analysis processes, reports were nicer. Direction could take the right decisions. The user profiles' profiles were far more accurate, and I did even set a predictive system in place that could tell how the users behavior would fluctuate on small changes —data based changes, nothing related to the UI. For example, the recommended matches the user was presented with. For the UI and for the most meaningful changes we mostly used A/B testing. It was where both decision methods intersected where it was shown that my system wasn't too bad at getting it right.

Then, everyone started to have an opinion on how I had to do things. This thirst for control didn't elude me, though: I wanted full power over the decisions regarding the match-making algorithm. We could pretend to swim in the synergies of the team until we drowned. It was, however, very clear that we were all opinionated and rarely inspired by others' ideas. We wanted to swim on a salt flat.

Regardless, I had been promised control over the algorithm... a promise that they were disinclined to fulfill: they wanted to prioritize me doing fancy reports and studying the users to lure them into wasting more of their minutes on their system. Instead, I wanted to empower the user. To create the most advanced match-making algorithm, one that would give them the ultimate love they were seeking —if that's what they were seeking, and as long as they had provided enough data.

They didn't even need to be extremely sincere: the layer of established, semi-deceitful patterns of filtering social interaction did give away a lot of information. At one point, the system would see through their useless masks. And make it possible to get to know both what someone was and who someone wanted to be.

An algorithm that would render divorce a thing of the past, by inferring its chances to an extremely accurate degree. Of course, some users wouldn't ever have a match: because some people are incompatible with love. At least, in the long term. Those would be relegated to a secondary match-making system where they can play among themselves... or maybe just silently expelled from further attempts at matching them —if the reputation of the system for lasting bonds was to be maximized.

That, due to its similarities with shadow-banning users, wasn't my cup of tea.

For most people, the perfect algorithm would optimize their romantic happiness, to find an everlasting love that would make them forget dangerouscrush.com. Like Big Pharma and their drugs, “Big Online Dating” had never wanted to cure loneliness: they wanted to only treat its symptoms. So their customers would be hooked to the service until they die. Alone and lonesome, of course. Sprinkled with dots of tepid satisfaction, like bits of sex. Just keep them satisfied enough to crave for more.

Having everyone voicing and pushing for their own opinions quickly generated a sizeable amount of friction. Most people were stressed. Mallory was often aloof and disconnected from technical matters. When her presence was really required, she would be there and behave professionally. Every other time, she would disappear.

Gary lacked an strategic approach: he would change direction daily. Guided by the last convincing comment. Although it wasn't a completely dysfunctional team, constructive communication was lacking —and my addition to their workforce wasn't going to solve that. With all these problems, I was becoming increasingly surprised by the fact that they had managed to grow so much. Visits and visitors kept pouring in, but they weren't a motivator anymore.

I had been less than a year in the company. It had started alright, but anxiety came back by that time of growing conflicts and lack of direction. I felt I couldn't retreat anywhere. Yet still, my life was inside, inside buildings where frustrations and anger lingered, finding me whenever I awoke, then not leaving me alone for a second. At my apartment, the construction in front started making everything tremble at 6am. Urban development, one of the additional annoyances of gentrification.

One of the greatest perks of IT is that many companies would allow you to start your day at 10am, sometimes 11am. I was there at 6:37am, consistently. Inside there, at least some light.

Because a great invisible menace had been breeding around me. The first days the itching of the bedbugs was tolerable: it was a nuisance, nothing more.

Day after day they came back to feed on my blood, making so patent that any battle against them was to be lost. Yet still we fought.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear of people burning their houses down when afflicted by the nightmare of unvanquishable bedbugs.

The million solutions never erradicated. Chemicals, natural insecticides, traps. Changing linen, beds, furniture. Called a pest control company. They were the most succesful keeping them at bay: an entire week! But bedbugs always found their way back to haunt us. Haunt me, as Eve wasn't bitten very often. She kept her sanity, because she wasn’t the target.

I couldn't sleep. The formications anticipated that whenever I'd fall asleep those areas of my skin would be trodden on by those disgusting lentils of doom, injecting their foul fangs every few steps, leaving microscopic filth all through their paths. Invisible, only to blink in the corners of one’s sight, hidding in the floaters of a retina with a sullen humour.

The level of anxiety that those creatures created, along the construction tremors and stress of the job, kept me from having a healthy sleeping schedule. Or a sane mind, for that matter.

It was a damaging routine. I was aware of my position in the company I was working for: it wasn't unreasonable animosity, but the fact that they had promised me much more freedom than they were actually giving. And that their decisions sucked.

Uneasy. Day after day; bursts of bedbug bites, a new lame ticket requesting a pointless feature —typically coming from Hank or Gary—, a new lecture from Mallory, and more and more ways in which the building I called home would quake.

The desert winds bullying humans into insanity didn't seem so bad after all. At least every one of the weirdos was more or less on the same spot. In the city, it always seemed that no-one had the same fight. Eve was almost unmoved: a bit annoyed by the situations at home, however with a healthy life out there. It always seemed that I was the only one unable to adapt to the persistent exasperation produced by other beings, or machines built by other beings.

Nevertheless, I knew that becoming a desert rat wasn't my destiny, nor had been my past. I had no escape. My depressive self started to get intimate with an intense feeling of impotence. It provoked a different kind of crying —as close to despair as I had been.

Those feelings were alleviated by small patches of social life that stem from Eve and some coworkers. It didn't provide me with happiness, but it took me off from a premature end a few times.