any social media dyes you

27 Jul, 2026

maybe the title is a bit too strongly worded. After all, any experience effects you, changes you. You absorb knowledge, unique experiences, and derive your own thoughts. This is a normal human process, and you could even argue a normal living creature's process.

But what about social media? you are not exploring, you are not deriving. Before you can fully think your own thoughts, another person's opinions appear before you. Maybe it's something you agree with, reinforcing what you already thought. Or maybe it's something you viscerally hate, sparking a response.

I've become more disillusioned in general to this process. That isn't saying I've disconnected from it entirely; after all, I'm still here. I browse my same old subreddits, scroll through twitter, or check up on what's going on on instagram. But its hard to avoid any kind of trends or communal opinions. Even bear's community clearly has a 'meta' - easily discerned from scanning discover for a bit.

That's not to say this is necessarily a bad thing - social networks can entirely be organically driven. But I'm starting to feel more and more that using any kind of social network starts slowly coloring you - instead of your own discovery, you are now seeing through other's lens constantly.

but is the solution to totally unplug? unlikely. The world is simply so connected now that the spread of these cultural colors¹ is not contained to the digital world - maybe people are simply blending more and more with their digital selves, a divide that used to exist, but these days seems to be rarer and rarer.

I think one thing you see more of now, as an act against simple consumption is the drive to create; the desire to be a entrepreneur, to be a content creator, to leave a mark of your own. but I don't feel that's the answer either; simply contributing to the problem instead, and getting stuck into a rat race of another kind.

and surely the fix is not to only consume the 'classics' and become a hipster (even if not performative) - for the world is constantly spinning, and progress will continue, whether you want it to or not.

I guess I've just been feeling a bit lost lately. Not quite a crisis, but perhaps it's also to not having a pure purpose. I applied to a job that asked what my 'personal philosophy' was recently. It's a tapestry of what I've seen, and is any of it actually my own?

#rant #scratchpad