The Multitudes of Self

The public arena of social media is a battleground between our most Compressed Identities. But it’s in private DMs, small group chats and offline conversations that I often find the most open and insightful conversations that show me who people are and how they want to be seen.

The contradiction of our current era is that our most open spaces are where we’re most closed off from our full selves, and our most closed spaces are where we can be most open.

We are forced to pick a singular lane and consistently craft our personal brand, package ourselves into a product and appease the repetitive, insatiable appetite of the algorithm. If we do this successfully, we can grow our audience and reap the rewards of financial and social capital.

This is the winning strategy for competing in today’s Olympic ga... See more