In This Is Not a PERFORMANCE, I shared something raw — a personal reckoning with the pressure to be “real” in a world that constantly watches. It was never meant to be polished. Just honest. The kind of truth you feel before you edit it.
But that piece, confessional and emotional, wasn’t the whole story.
Because this isn’t just about my fatigue. It’s about what we’ve become.
Then, I started tracing the thread further back. Beyond personal reflection. Into history. Infrastructure. Design.
I began to see how we got here — how performance became the default not just emotionally, but structurally.
That exploration became a deeper work: Performing NOT PERFORMING.
A full-length reflection on authenticity, interiority, and the erosion of the sacred in a world that never stops watching.
From Connection to Content
There was a time when social networks were just that — social. Campfires, not stages. Places to connect, not perform.
But over two decades, those networks evolved into media platforms.
And the shift wasn’t cosmetic — it was spiritual.
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We stopped feeding the social self.
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We started feeding the media self — curated, optimized, monetized.
This wasn’t just a cultural drift. It was an algorithmic, economic, and psychological transformation.
The Quiet Cost of Always Being Seen
The full reflection unpacks that shift — how we moved from presence to pressure, from expression to exposure.
It asks:
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What happens when even stillness becomes a show?
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When silence itself gets tracked, labeled, engaged with?
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When the soul no longer feels safe to speak?
And it offers no quick fix. Just a quiet invitation:
To notice. To remember. To step offstage for a moment — not in protest, but in peace.
If This Is Not a PERFORMANCE resonated with you, this deeper work might give shape to that resonance — putting language to what many of us feel but struggle to name.
Read in full → (A longform reflection, best read slowly.)