Google and Facebook Decide You Don’t Know What You Like – But Clovis Does

By Tom Seest

At Sequatchie Crossing, we tell the stories of Sequatchie Crossing.

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🎤 Audio Overview

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Act I: The Feed Turns Sideways

It started on a Tuesday morning when folks in Sequatchie Crossing logged onto Facebook and noticed something odd. Instead of seeing updates about their own hobbies, kids, or tractor parts for sale, the algorithm had swapped their feeds with whatever their neighbors had clicked on the night before.

Boot Barnes, who usually filled his mornings reading posts about muffler repairs and bargain diesel fuel, opened his laptop to find endless ads for crocheted doilies. “I don’t crochet, and I don’t do doilies,” he muttered, stabbing at the screen. “This ain’t my feed. This is Mabel Dean’s feed.”

Sure enough, across town Mabel Dean Ashcroft was being bombarded with hunting scope recommendations and suspiciously specific “12-point deer attractant kits,” courtesy of Boot’s late-night browsing.

“It’s like living in each other’s heads,” Mabel declared, adjusting her glasses with fury. “And Boot’s head is a scary place.”

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Act II: Clovis the Curator

Clovis Strickland, never one to let a conspiracy pass him by, declared himself Sequatchie’s “Algorithm Sheriff.” From the Overlook he scribbled notes into a spiral-bound pad while furiously clicking “like” on every UFO video he could find.

“Listen,” he told a bewildered Sheriff Peeler at the Dunlap Restaurant. “The tech companies have finally admitted what I’ve been saying for years—they’re harvesting our interests and redistributing them for neighbor-to-neighbor surveillance. That’s why Daisy showed up with three chew toy ads and a coupon for a steakhouse in Chattanooga. Daisy doesn’t even have thumbs, Sheriff!”

Sheriff Peeler sighed, stirred his coffee, and replied, “Clovis, you’ve been telling me Daisy was being watched since the dog caught a squirrel in front of your Ring camera. Let’s not stir folks up unless we have to.”

But it was too late.

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Act III: A Town Divided

The phenomenon spread. Billy Hooper, Sequatchie’s would-be inventor, suddenly found his Facebook full of real estate listings for goat barns, thanks to the Airbnb hosts down the road. Meanwhile, those same hosts were forced to scroll through page after page of nacho cheese dispensers because Billy had been pricing out supplies for his “Snack Hose 3000.”

At the Sequatchie Fellowship Hall, a heated town meeting broke out.

“This is worse than gossip,” declared Mabel Dean, waving her clipboard like a gavel. “At least with gossip you only hear half the story.”

“That’s right,” Boot agreed. “And now I can’t get through one evening without crochet patterns showing up in my YouTube feed. Do you know what that does to a man’s reputation?”

From the back row, Trixie Jo Bartlett piped up: “Well, I kinda like it. I didn’t know Miss Mabel was following that sourdough bread group. I learned a lot about starters last night.”

Half the room booed, half the room nodded, and Sheriff Peeler realized the town was neatly split—pro-algorithm versus anti-algorithm.

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Act IV: The Great Feed War

Within days, the town fractured into camps.

• The Feed-For-Me Crowd (led by Boot and Mabel) demanded a return to the old days of personalized feeds. “What I click is my business,” Boot insisted, “and not Mabel’s.”

• The Feed-For-We Crowd (championed by Clovis and Trixie Jo) argued that Sequatchie should embrace the new neighbor-fed system as “the truest reflection of small-town life.”

Soon, it became weaponized. Clovis deliberately clicked on obscure conspiracy sites so that the entire west side of town woke up to articles about lizard people in Congress. Meanwhile, Mabel countered by liking dozens of crocheted pumpkin cozies, drowning her neighbors in pumpkin-patterned yarn ads.

“It’s psychological warfare, but with coupons,” muttered Sheriff Peeler, rubbing his temples.

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Act V: The Overload

The situation spiraled when the town’s AI chatbot—trained on Sequatchie Crossing’s entire business directory—also got swept up in the algorithm exchange. Suddenly, when someone asked about plumbing services, the chatbot responded with goat barn listings or crochet tutorials.

“This is how civilizations fall,” Clovis declared at the Overlook, gesturing to the valley below. “First Rome, now us. And mark my words, Google started both.”

Boot threw his hat on the ground. “I just wanted mufflers. That’s all I wanted.”

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Epilogue: Daisy Gets the Last Word

At the Dunlap Restaurant, Sheriff Peeler tried to restore order with coffee and pie. Folks argued back and forth until Daisy the hound, snoozing by the jukebox, lifted her head at the sound of an ad for bacon-flavored chew toys playing faintly from Clovis’s phone.

She wagged her tail once, decisively, and went back to sleep.

The room fell quiet. Maybe Daisy was right. Maybe none of it mattered.

But by the next morning, the whole town was on edge again—because everyone, without exception, woke up to identical ads for discounted hearing aids.

Mabel Dean muttered darkly, “Now they’re just mocking us.”

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⚠️ Disclaimer

This story is a work of satire set in the fictional town of Sequatchie Crossing. While it playfully references real companies like Facebook and Google, all characters, dialogue, and events are fictional. The tale exaggerates small-town quirks and digital frustrations for humor and should not be read as factual reporting.