just finished a 14km run. endorphins flooding my system, everything feels clearer, sharper.
legs burning, but in that good way that reminds you you’re alive.
i happened to pass this guy on my route. looked to be about early twenties, walking slow with this oversized beige cardigan, tote bag on his shoulder, iced matcha latte in hand at 7am.
stopping every few steps to take a photo of the sunrise with his film camera.
literally as i was approaching he was taking a picture, and when i turned back he was taking another one.
and i could just tell.
nothing about him looked natural. he walked like he was uncomfortable in his own skin and nothing looked like it fit.
the thing is i’ve seen a thousand guys like this. same aesthetic. same careful curation. same performance.
the cardigan. the tote had some obscure indie brand logo. the matcha was from the most aesthetic coffee shop in the area, not the closest one.
he wasn’t experiencing the morning. he was curating it.
constructing a version of himself that would look good in a grid.
that would signal the right things to the right people.
performative authenticity.
which is the most inauthentic thing possible.
i’m back home now.
as you all know, black coffee with raw honey, that combination that somehow works even though it shouldn’t.
bittersweet.
sitting in silence because my brain’s still processing that run.
decided to do a deep dive into the epidemic of performance. of curation. of people who’ve optimized their entire existence for external validation.
and why it’s getting worse.
WHY EVERYTHING FEELS FAKE NOW
spotify wrapped drops and suddenly everyone’s a music connoisseur with impeccable taste.
200,000+ minutes listened.
curated playlists. artists you’ve never heard them mention all year suddenly defining their personality.
for a lot people it’s not about the music anymore.
it’s about what the music says about them.
i know people who literally farm spotify minutes. leave playlists running overnight. skip songs they actually like because they don’t fit the aesthetic they’re building.
their wrapped isn’t a reflection of what they listened to.
it’s a constructed identity statement.
same with everything else.
that just one example i happen to use because it’s recent, but it happens everywhere.
the guy posting gym selfies every day but his physique never changes because he’s there for content, not results.
the girl with the perfect morning routine aesthetic but she’s anxious and exhausted because maintaining the performance is draining her.
the entrepreneur posting motivational quotes about grinding but hasn’t made a dollar because he’s too busy performing success to build it.
everyone’s living for the documentation instead of the experience.
and here’s what’s fucked.
they don’t even realize they’re doing it.
they genuinely think this is who they are.
they’ve performed so long they’ve forgotten what’s real and what’s constructed.
THE PSYCHOLOGY: WE’RE ALL RUNNING EXPERIMENTS
here’s what nobody talks about.
humans don’t have fixed identities. we’re constantly testing.
trying different versions of ourselves. seeing what gets rewarded. adjusting based on feedback.
we are tribal creatures. we need to fit into the tribe, be validated and accepted
it’s how we’ve always worked.
but before, you tested in small groups. maybe 20 people. your friends, family, coworkers.
you’d try a joke. if it landed, you’d use it again. if it bombed, you’d drop it.
you’d dress a certain way. if people complimented you, you’d lean into it. if they didn’t, you’d adjust.
small feedback loops. local testing. manageable scale.
but now?
you’re running experiments for thousands of people simultaneously.
and the feedback is instant, quantified, addictive.
every post is a test. every story is data. every aesthetic choice is an A/B test of your personality.
and unlike real life, you can see exactly what works.
this post got 500 likes. that one got 50.
this version of you performed well. that version didn’t.
so you do more of what works. less of what doesn’t.
and slowly, imperceptibly, you become the version that tests best.
not the version that’s most authentic.
the version that’s most optimized for engagement.
you’re not choosing your personality anymore.
the algorithm is.
the crowd is.
and because the feedback is so clear and so rewarding, you don’t even notice it happening.
you just wake up one day and realize you don’t know who you actually are anymore.
you know who performs well.
but who are you when nobody’s watching?
most people can’t answer that.
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Kurt Vonnegut
THE MATCHA MASCULINITY AESTHETIC
let’s talk about the specific type of guy i saw this morning.
the soft boy aesthetic.
matcha latte. tote bag. film camera. thrifted vintage cardigan.
it’s not that these things are bad.
it’s that it’s so obvious to tell that nothing about it was chosen.
it’s all signaling.
i know because i’ve seen this exact setup a hundred times. different guys, same aesthetic, same vibe.
like they all read the same manual on how to be interesting.
chances are he’s not drinking matcha because it’s his favorite drink.
he’s drinking it because it signals refined taste, health consciousness, cultural awareness.
chances are he’s not carrying a tote because it’s practical.
he’s carrying it because it signals environmental concern and rejection of mainstream masculinity.
the film camera?
nostalgia signaling.
“i appreciate analog, i’m not like other guys addicted to their phones.”
every single choice is a signal.
and i’d bet money if you asked him why he likes any of it, he couldn’t give you a real answer.
because he doesn’t actually like it.
he likes what it says about him.
and this is the thing
it’s not just that guy, it is a generation of people who’ve completely outsourced their identity to social performance.
they don’t know what they actually like.
they know what they’re supposed to like.
they’re not building anything real. they’re building a character that gets validation.
and the sad part? it’s working. they get the validation they crave and the attention they want and it becomes addicting.
they get the likes. the attention. the “omg your vibe is everything” comments.
but inside?
chances are they feel miserable.
because performance is exhausting.
validation is never enough. you will always crave more
they’ve buried their actual self so deep they can’t find it anymore.
THE SOCIAL MEDIA TRAP
“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you.” - Lao Tzu
social media didn’t create this.
it amplified it to psychologically destructive levels.
before, you performed for your immediate circle. maybe 20-30 people whose opinions actually mattered.
now you’re performing for thousands.
and the performance never ends.
you can’t just post something and move on.
you have to be a different character on each platform.
and people keep wondering why they feel fragmented and exhausted.
because they are. they’re not one person anymore but instead they’re four different performances competing for cognitive resources.
it’s become compulsory now.
if you’re not performing, you’re invisible.
if you’re not curating, you’re irrelevant.
opting out feels like social suicide.
so people feel like they need to play the game.
THE SPOTIFY WRAPPED EXAMPLE
spotify wrapped is the perfect microcosm of this.
it’s supposed to be a fun year-end summary. “here’s what you listened to.”
but it became a status signal.
“here’s proof i have good taste.”
so people game it.
they listen to the “right” artists. avoid the “wrong” ones.
curate their data like they’re building a resume.
i know someone who has a separate spotify account for their “real” listening and their “public” listening.
the public account is what they’ll share for wrapped.
indie artists, sophisticated choices, eclectic taste.
the private account is what they actually listen to.
top 40, guilty pleasures, whatever they genuinely enjoy.
because god forbid someone sees they listened to that one obscure artist 50,000 times.
their taste in music isn’t about enjoying music anymore.
it’s about what their taste communicates about their identity.
and this is fucking sad.
music is one of the most personal, emotional, genuine forms of self-expression.
and we’ve turned it into another performance metric.
you can’t even listen to songs you like without considering how it’ll look to others.
that’s the level of performative hell we’re in.
WHAT IT COSTS YOU
all this performance has a cost.
and it’s higher than people realize.
maintaining multiple performances across multiple platforms is mentally exhausting.
you’re constantly monitoring, adjusting, curating.
that’s cognitive resources that could go to actual thinking, creating, living.
when you’re always performing, you lose touch with your actual emotions.
you start feeling what you’re supposed to feel instead of what you actually feel.
your relationships become transactional.
“what does this person add to my social media presence?” instead of “do i actually enjoy their company?”
you’re documenting achievements instead of building them.
posting about the gym instead of actually training.
talking about goals instead of executing.
and the brutal truth: you’ve performed so many versions of yourself that you don’t know which one is real anymore.
who are you when nobody’s watching?
most people can’t answer that.
THE WAY OUT
opting out completely isn’t realistic for most people.
social media is embedded in work, relationships, culture.
but you can reduce the performance.
return to something more genuine.
start auditing your choices.
ask yourself “do i actually like this or do i like what it signals?”
for everything.
your clothes, your music, your hobbies, your opinions.
do things with no intention of documenting them.
go somewhere without posting about it.
have experiences that exist only in your memory.
stop optimizing for the algorithm.
post what you actually think, like, experience.
even if it gets less engagement.
especially if it gets less engagement.
unfollow performative accounts.
stop consuming people’s highlight reels.
it’s making you perform harder.
find your actual preferences.
what do you like when nobody’s watching?
what would you do if you knew nobody would ever see it or know about it?
that’s closer to your real self.
accept being misunderstood.
not everyone needs to get you.
not everything needs to be explained or justified.
you can just be without performing being.
this isn’t easy.
your brain will resist because the performance has been rewarded for so long.
but slowly, consistently, you can start separating your actual self from your performed self.
and the real you?
way more interesting than the curated version ever was.
THE BOTTOM LINE
“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” - Brené Brown
everything feels performative now because it is.
we’re living in an environment that rewards curation over authenticity.
that values signals over substance.
that makes people into brands.
and most people are playing along without realizing how much they’ve lost in the process.
the matcha guy on his morning walk isn’t happy.
he’s anxious about whether his aesthetic is landing.
whether people think he’s interesting.
whether his carefully constructed identity is convincing.
and he’ll never be happy until he stops performing and starts existing.
same for everyone else playing this game.
your curated spotify wrapped, your aesthetic instagram feed, your perfectly crafted tweets.
none of it brings actual satisfaction.
because deep down you know it’s not real.
and validation for a performance never hits the same as validation for who you actually are.
so stop performing.
start existing.
be the weird, inconsistent, aesthetically confused person you actually are.
it won’t get as many likes.
but you’ll finally feel real again.
and that’s worth more than any amount of engagement.
ps. if you’re not upgraded to paid, you’re missing the deeper breakdowns.
new paid post dropping soon. the best one yet.
already got the dopamine deep dive and the charisma mechanics.
$7/month locks you in at that price forever. early supporters get grandfathered.
prices going up for new subscribers soon.
check out what you’re missing:
I like the whole idea of this. But why can’t we just let people like what they like and let them discover their identity within the process of “performing”. If the guy is drinking matcha or he’s wearing a vintage thrifted cardigan that doesn’t entirely mean that he’s being performative.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a very big hater of this whole performing epidemic but that doesn’t mean I should judge the guy I saw on my “14km run that made my legs throb” drinking a matcha and taking pictures of the sunrise. I really enjoyed reading this but idk it just doesn’t sit right with me that it’s okay to make conclusions about some guy with a cardigan and a tote bag on (who might btw really be enjoying his time and is genuinely content with the way he’s living life). Big fan tho!!!!
That's a lot to project on a stranger just taking pictures of the sunrise. I think part of defeating performative culture is acknowledging that a brief snapshot of somebody's life does not and cannot dictate their character.