Part of the reason social media has felt even more “flattening” to one’s identity
Is because social media has shown its benefit towards economic mobility
You can’t sell 50 things. You gotta sell 1, really well. And when that “widget” is the self -> you gotta package it neatly
We can always opt out of this arrangement, of course, and live happily in meatspace, but that is precisely the point: Offline we exist by default; online we have to post our way into selfhood.