Algorithmancy

Baylina Pu on finding meaning in the endless scroll.

Internet users are behaving more like occultists every day. We’ve appropriated mystical language to describe online phenomena—a meme can be “god tier,” accrue “+1000 aura,” or be utterly “cursed.” Where our ancestors made offerings to the gods for blessings, we now ask to be blessed by the algorithm. In particular, the advent of the Instagram reel has given rise to a uniquely Gen Z method of divination I call “algorithmancy,” in the form of what Instagram commenters worship as the elusive “mythical reel pull.”

A “mythical reel pull” (on TikTok, a “mythical FYP pull”) is a strange, contextless video, delivered to one’s feed by the Instagram algorithm, that exudes an inexplicably powerful energy. Reels are the platform’s short-form videos that can be found on the Instagram Explore page, but which you must now also be subjected to on your home feed. “Pull” refers to one’s draw in gambling, as from a slot machine or a pack of Pokémon cards. Coincidentally, it also describes the symbolic motion of finding an Instagram reel—“pulling” down the page with your finger to refresh your feed.

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Like using a divining rod, tarot cards, or a crystal ball, pulling for a mythical reel is a way to dowse the unpredictable landscape of the internet for a message from the universe. For a reel to qualify as “mythical,” it must possess an arcane power, whether awe-striking—like a cat walking atop a telephone wire in a thunderstorm—or absurdist, like five pieces of toast standing upright on a table. What an MRP is not is a carefully constructed dispatch from a popular influencer; the lower the follower count of the original creator, the more bona fide the MRP.

In fact, an MRP feels spiritually closer to the classic viral videos of old YouTube, back when the site was an egalitarian, influencer-free anarchy filled with piano-playing cats and finger-biting toddlers. But in the case of pulling for mythical reels, this type of content is deliberately sought out and identified by commenters, as a biologist tags a new specimen, and the raw “energy” of an MRP is more important than its entertainment value. An MRP is an auspice, and to encounter one on your feed feels fortunate and even fated. The obscurity of its meaning is akin to the inscrutability of a tea leaf reading, requiring interpretation on the part of the viewer.

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