If your phone's facial recognition does not recognize your face

Yesterday I was in good company. I spoke with an art historian from the Rijksmuseum, the producer of King's Day, a lovely woman from Groningen, and an art dealer, all in less than an hour, while I was having a meal that chef Joris Bijdendijk had created based on Designer Outlet Roermond. You could spend your evenings worse, I thought. On my way home, I googled the opening hours of the Rijksmuseum, looked at options for a weekend in Groningen, and decided to buy more art. But when I picked up my phone to do a quick round on Facebook, I had to enter my password because my very own iPhone didn't recognize my face, and my Facebook timeline filled up with crazy goats. It makes you think, those digital struggles.

First of all, I want to criticize Facebook's programming. I'm familiar with the phenomenon of retargeting, which the entire internet does to ensure you buy a lot, so I expect that one bag I was secretly eyeing on Farfetch to pop up in the sidebar, but my timeline is bordering on embarrassing. Let me give you a tour. It starts with updates from Amayzine (which I want to see), followed by a video of a beige fluffy dog that gets scared out of its wits by a towel (funny), a Balenciaga T-shirt in between, three (!) cat videos, an article claiming that crying helps you lose weight (handy, but probably fake), a post from RTL about a farmer who amputates his own leg with a pocket knife (good lord), and a grand finale with an uplifting quote about being old and feeling hungover when you've gone to bed two hours later than usual (oh hello, Rumag). The problem is that if I scroll through tomorrow, I’ll get roughly the same content served to me, with the chance that RTL completely disappears from my life. That means that by the time the weekend comes, my world is filled with dogs, cats, and goats. In short: my timeline looks like a petting zoo. And thanks, Facebook. Yesterday I felt somewhat smarter from a conversation about an etching by Rembrandt, and you just completely ruined that.

And then that facial recognition: it does things to your self-image. On a good day, the thing scans through my gigantic Celine without a care, but when I want to check the weather from bed in the morning, it gives a shaky error message because it doesn't recognize my face. I could torture myself and quickly type in my password, but somewhere I get angry and want to prove the opposite. That I am indeed me, yes... Which makes me open my eyes a bit wider, turn my lips a little apart (why?), and I try to tidy myself up by brushing my hair out of my face. Result: a trembling phone that claims again that I am not me.

Not that it matters at all, by the way, because besides the weather report, I only see goats butting heads and a cat being put in the bath by its cruel owner. Moral of this story: I doubt my intelligence and appearance, all thanks to my phone. If you’re looking for me this weekend: I’m going to the museum, finish reading Ahmet Altan's book, and do some major maintenance on my head.