The world, I realized, is built on passive connection, on the low-effort maintenance of relationships through shared content, mutual voyeurism, and the occasional emoji reaction. Without that, you become a ghost, haunting the edges of people’s lives but never quite materializing.

Because to not be online is to accept that you will be forgotten. This is the great, unspoken truth of our age. If you do not post, you do not exist. If you are not constantly reinforcing your presence, your relevance, your desirability, then you are slipping, shrinking, becoming unimportant. It is not enough to simply be anymore, you must be perce... See more