My TiVo Thinks I’m Gay

Abstract

In 2002, during Silicon Valley’s recovery after the dot-com crash and the recent push for sexual equality in the United States and across the globe, various media began pondering the question of what to do if TiVo “thinks you are gay.” Here, I analyze a King of Queens (1998–2007) episode and a The Mind of the Married Man (2001–2012) episode that center on this question and how they illustrate a sudden breakdown in sexual norms and identities even as they served to make TiVo’s personal video recorders (PVRs) and recommendation systems more attractive to the urban, liberal, and largely heterosexual viewer that TiVo desired. These narratives became deeply connected to TiVo’s identity in ways that made the PVR appear simultaneously transgressive and conventional—the birth of a new algorithmic culture and the furtherance of the television industry as status quo.