Authenticity™: Now Available in 30 Pre-Approved Aesthetics

I open the Explore page on Instagram and it’s always the same:

The same songs.
The same transitions.
The same wide-angle apartment tours with the same fern and the same soft lighting and the same coffee mug held just so.

Everyone smiling with the same smirk.
Everyone using the same SEO tricks.
Everyone becoming a carbon copy of the last “authentic” person who went viral.

It’s not content.
It’s a simulation of honesty — polished, packaged, sold back to us in neutral tones.

And every time I start to share something real —
something raw, something I wrote from the gut,
someone always chimes in:
"You’ve gotta get on Instagram."
"How else are you going to build an audience?"
"How else are people going to find you?"

Like I should be grateful for the opportunity to perform my soul for people who scroll past it in three seconds.

And maybe I should.

But here’s the thing:

I’m a writer.
Not a brand.
Not an algorithm whisperer.
Not a social media strategist with a ring light and a thirst trap backup plan.

I didn’t get into this to optimize myself for discovery.
I got into this to say something true.

But now truth isn’t enough.

Now you have to dress it up in trend cycles.
Now your honesty has to come with a hook, a hashtag, and a post time optimized for “maximum engagement.”

And even if you do find a tone, a look, a format that’s real?

Someone else will steal it.
Soften it.
Strip it of danger.
Monetize it.
Until it’s just another pastel square in the sea of “authentic” lifestyle influencers who talk about burnout while selling you a planner.

We’ve flattened identity.
We’ve smoothed out expression.
We’ve taken something sacred — the creative act — and jammed it into a fucking template.

And if you linger long enough on that Explore page,
the facade cracks even worse:

Girls pulling you toward their OnlyFans.
Guys trying to pull you toward their course on how to be a “real man” in the 21st century.
How to be "alpha."
How to dominate.
How to monetize your masculinity.

It’s not social media anymore.
It’s a septic tank.
A brimming, reeking vat of engineered loneliness, repackaged as opportunity.

It’s not a community.
It’s a meat market —
body for sale, identity for sale, self-worth auctioned off one post at a time.

And we’re supposed to believe this is where “success” lives?
That this is the river we need to swim in if we want to matter?

Fuck that.

I’m not diving into a cesspool to be seen.

Because if the only way to matter is to mimic,
then maybe it’s better not to matter at all.

Let the algorithm chew on beige.
Let the influencers and the hustle bros and the OnlyFans girlbosses drown each other in the shit they call success.

I’ll be over here writing shit that doesn’t trend,
that doesn’t dance,
that doesn’t smile on cue.

Maybe I’ll never blow up.
Maybe I’ll stay broke and unheard.

But at least I’ll know the voice in my head is mine —
not something I borrowed from the feed.

And that’s more than most of them can say.