Social Media

I was sitting on the subway the other day and glanced up from my book to notice something that shouldn’t be remarkable, yet somehow was: every single person in my line of sight was staring at their phone. This wasn’t the first time I’d observed this phenomenon, but something about this particular moment struck me differently. It wasn’t just that everyone was looking at their phones—it was the mechanical thumb-scrolling and the complete disconnection from their surroundings.

Sometimes we do things because we want to, sometimes we do things because we must. You might tackle that tedious spreadsheet at work not because you love Excel, but because it’s your responsibility. Or you might blast that 80s power ballad for the twentieth time simply because it brings you joy. Simple enough, right?

There’s a subreddit called r/amiugly where people post pictures of themselves and ask the community to rate their appearance. It’s a place where people seek validation, reassurance that they are beautiful, or at least not ugly. After spending time on this subreddit, I’ve noticed something striking: most people posting aren’t ugly at all. They’re generally normal-looking individuals who skew young and presumably struggle with low self-esteem. It’s a fascinating window into the minds of people who are deeply insecure about their appearance despite—in most cases—having nothing to worry about.

Take a walk on any given day these days, and instead of staring at your phone, try looking around. If you want to do this on hard mode, leave the phone at home if you can manage. You might discover a fascinating world unfolding around you that many of us miss while scrolling through our digital lives.

At some point in recent history, travel transformed from a luxury into a cultural expectation. The rise of social media has dramatically changed how and why we travel. A 2019 study found that 40% of millennials choose travel destinations based on “Instagrammability” rather than cost or cultural experience1. While technology has proliferated travel information and made the world more accessible, it has also shifted our motivations in subtle ways.

In the bygone era, we had résumés—and today, many of us still maintain these professional summaries (or curriculum vitae, for the academically inclined). But now we also curate digital identities through social profiles that serve as our new first impressions in an increasingly online world. For the professionally ambitious, these digital personas have become the initial point of contact, the gateway through which career opportunities flow. In the context of employment, these digital breadcrumbs form a constellation that hiring managers use to make judgments about your candidacy long before any interview. Best hope those recruiters don’t unearth your anonymous Reddit alter ego.

There’s a trope in New York City that you can identify tourists from their propensity to walk around staring up at the tall buildings. This isn’t necessarily meant to be interpreted literally, but rather it’s more about the fact that the tourists are fully present—taken aback by everything to look at, much of which is in the upward direction depending on where you are in the city.

Most of us experience life through the lens of social expectations—the generally accepted norms and implicit guidelines about appropriate behavior in various contexts. These expectations create an interesting intersection between societal ideals and our lived experience. While many aspire to authentic self-expression, maintaining complete authenticity presents genuine challenges in a world that often incentivizes strategic self-presentation. Professional networking platforms exemplify this dynamic, creating environments where career advancement naturally encourages highlighting accomplishments and capabilities in ways that may sometimes diverge from more nuanced self-perception.

In our current cultural landscape, there’s a fascinating phenomenon worth examining: the growing obsession with self-promotion and personal branding. Perhaps the most visible manifestation is the rise of “influencers”—a term that itself reveals much about our values. What many who adopt this label might not realize is that true influence rarely announces itself so boldly.

I’ve noticed a trend amongst startups (particularly those in the financial-ish space) which amounts to some variation of “hey guys, maybe we can get customers if we use memes?”. This is not dissimilar to the “viral” craze of the early 2010s in startup land, where a number of companies raised mountains of VC cash entirely on some silly app gaining millions of users overnight. One of my favourite examples is the Yo app.