writing about the luxury of being offline requires being extremely online. The status symbol of disconnection can only be signaled through connection. But perhaps that’s the point: the real flex is navigating the network with enough grace that no one can tell you’re performing at all.

So the status signal isn’t actually in being offline. It’s in having the capital - social, economic, cultural - to be selectively online in ways that benefit you without feeding the machine more than necessary.

Kyle Chayka has observed that having no followers has become its own form of status. It’s here we observe the curdling of resistance into luxury: as invisibility becomes desirable, it becomes a marker of privilege. Those who can afford to opt out, who have offline networks robust enough to sustain them, whose careers don’t depend on algorithmic... See more