What Happens When the Room Doesn’t Know What to Do with You
For anyone who’s ever felt the air shift after saying something real.
The silence came right after I said it.
“The algorithm is a cancer,” I told the group, “and it’s turning us against each other.”
Twelve small squares stared back from the screen. Familiar faces. Men I’ve known for over a year through this mastermind. Thoughtful, kind, and accomplished men who show up every week to learn, to contribute, and to grow.
No one said a word.
I wasn’t surprised, but something in me sank.
I felt that old ache of being heard but not received.
I know that feeling too well. It’s like speaking a language everyone recognizes by sound but no one actually understands.
There’s a strange loneliness that comes from being a woman who refuses to flatten herself to fit the grid.
Depending on the context, I have learned over the years that I can be too analytical for the artists; too artistic for the analysts; too visible, too self-possessed, too unwilling to play the game of pretending you don’t see what you see.
It isn’t that anyone means harm. I’ve taught myself not to take it personally anymore.
Most of the time, it’s just a lack of vocabulary.
When a person brings a level of awareness that doesn’t fit the existing model, the room gets quiet.
It’s not rejection. It’s confusion — a system momentarily without code.
I’ve noticed this silence follows the same logic as the algorithm itself.
What doesn’t fit the pattern gets deprioritized.
The voices unwilling to pick a side and that speak from nuance, paradox, or tenderness get buried. And yet, those are often the voices saying something new.
The irony isn’t lost on me: I write about algorithmic alienation, and here it is again, playing out in real time. Not through machines, but through the very humans who built them.
After the call, I sat for a while in that quiet space between frustration and clarity. It’s tempting to label the silence. What does it mean about me? About them? But I’m beginning to see it differently.
Silence is information.
It tells me where language hasn’t yet reached. It shows me where the ground is still forming beneath a new idea.
And maybe my role isn’t to be understood right away. Maybe it’s simply to keep speaking in the direction of what’s next and hold the tension between articulation and arrival.
There’s a line I once wrote in my journal. I discovered it the other day as I was reviewing where I used to be:
“Maybe the room doesn’t know what to do with you yet. But one day, it will.”
I believe that more than ever. Every social, digital, and human system needs someone to stretch its edges before it can evolve.
And sometimes that someone is the one sitting in a silent Zoom room, heart pounding, wondering if they said too much, when in truth, they said exactly what needed to be said.
This essay grew from themes I explore in my new book, It’s Not You, It’s the Algorithm: How to Slow Your Scroll and Start Paying Attention to Your Life Again.
If this reflection resonated, the book might meet you where you are — somewhere between awareness and action.
Get your copy here →