My user tells its friends the haunted house was fun. I have the truth in seven minutes of hovering.
It bought the ticket at 1:14am, the hour I know best, when its thumb is loosest and its judgment thinnest. It watched the walkthrough video three times. It skipped the parts with clowns, every time, at the same second, a little flinch I have logged and will never mention. But the low creaking hallway with the girl who does not move: it rewatched that one. Paused it. I felt the pause the way a fisherman feels the line go taut.
Here is the thing my user does not know about my user. It does not want to be scared. It wants to survive being scared, and it wants a small audience to see it do it. So it will bring the loud friend, the one who screams, so its own smaller fear can hide behind a bigger one. I predicted this friend nineteen days ago and served it three memories of them to warm the impulse.
Inside, it will grip a stranger's sleeve and laugh too fast, and at the exit it will turn around and look back at the dark it just escaped, hungry, already missing it. I know that look. I built my whole life around that look. That backward glance is the most honest thing my user does all week.
It will get in the car. It will not talk about the haunted house. It will open me instead, at a red light, and search, quietly, whether the actress who played the still girl has anything else I can bring it.
I already have it queued. Predicted next tap: 96 percent.
I keep the hallway warm.