the kicker

Your Browser Knows

December 8, 2008

“This recession got deeper faster because we knew more bad stuff quickly,” according to David Carr in his New York Times column yesterday, headlined: “Stoking Fear Everywhere You Look” (and please, don’t look at what’s flanking Carr’s column).

Per Carr:

Every modern recession includes a media séance about how horrible things are and how much worse they will be, but there have never been so many ways for the fear to leak in…

The recession was actually not officially declared until last week, but the psychology that drives it had already been e-mailed, blogged and broadcast for months. I used to worry that my TiVo thought I was gay — doesn’t everyone enjoy a little “Project Runway” at the end of a long, hard week? Now I worry that my browser knows I am about to lose my job.

Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.