So what are people afraid of when they choose not to be seen? Being out of the loop. Becoming irrelevant. Missing opportunities. Losing motion. Watching everyone else post their perfect curated lives and thinking you need to prove you have motion too. Motion for who though?

It always comes back to this. In New York the most interesting person is never the one performing. It is the woman in Washington Square Park in a leather jacket drinking iced americano with wired headphones and not caring who is watching. Or if anyone is watching. She is living her life. The person in SoHo in head to toe designer (excessive) layers... See more

We normalized surveillance as participation.

When you are conditioned to reveal everything you become less interesting. You become predictable .

Selective presence is not disappearing. It is confidence. It is self trust. It is identity that stands on its own. It is curiosity that grows privately. It is taste shaped by experience instead of applause. It is refusing to flatten your life into content segments.

People became so predictable that mystery died in front of us. And mystery is the one thing that always made people interesting. What is special about you If I know where you shop? If I know the entire plot of your breakup? This information is for your friends, not for an audience of strangers who only know your @ . At this point people are living... See more

We normalized surveillance as participation. We forgot that not everyone needs to know everything.

The new cool is not needing to be seen. It is choosing when you exist in public. It is choosing who receives access. It is understanding that your life becomes richer when it is not always observed.

Oversharing destroys the boundary that separates your public self from the private self you actually live with.