If the ads seem to know you well, it’s worth asking how well you know yourself.

What gets shown to you is assembled from what you have actually done, which is a more reliable record than the account in your head. The picture can be uncomfortable because it includes your behavior and none of your intentions, and the two are further apart than people assume. Being described accurately by a machine mostly shows you what your evidence looks like.

Rather than being unsettled by it, treat the pattern as a rough report and ask whether you agree. Where the picture is wrong, notice why. Where it is right and you do not like it, that is the part worth a proper look.