Are your thoughts really your own?
Who were you before you knew social media?
Recently, I have come to realise, or maybe it has been around for quite some time. I became aware that all my thoughts and ideas are, consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously, borrowed or inspired from something I have already come across. And it is just not me, I have realised that somehow all the people I meet have the same thoughts. No one has something different, eccentric or even weirdly unique to say. All the discussions sounds same, maybe because we are being fed the same algorithm and we are being trained on the same dataset of those same advertisements, reels, posts, and blogs.
I think that even the idea of this blog has come to me unconsciously through a reel. Most of the people discussing politics, series, conspiracy theories, or even philosophical ideologies actively take their points from random reels. Maybe that’s just another side effect of being a chronically online person or having a very doomscrolling and present internet life, that I understand where all these points come from. And that led me to realise that no one has their own perspective anymore. Why I say ‘anymore’ is not because it didn’t use to happen before, but because of how it is happening on such a large scale. More than ever before.
Humans have an inner desire for validation, to fit in, to be liked and to feel like they belong in a group. That is how popular culture started in high school. Most kids followed that one popular kid and made all their likes as their own to become them. I think the same has become globalised with social media, which is just another high school for people of all age groups, and everyone wants to be cool here.
Suddenly, writers like Kafka and Dostoevsky have become a trend, and people show off their books more than they have read them to look like they're intellectual. Suddenly, everyone’s favourite artist is Van Gogh, and everyone sympathises with Sylvia and Vigirnia. Everyone is into dark academia, but in the end, all bookstagrammers or influencers are writing the same quotes and using the same aesthetics and the same thoughts put in other words. They are no better than the AI, and somehow they still have the following and the bag (money).
I have always loved the lilies and baby breaths, but when one of my friends asked me what my favourite flower is, I said lotus. After some days, I kept believing that I had liked lotus for the longest time. I liked all the reels with lotus flowers in a pond, but then it struck me.
Do I like lotus flowers because I like them blooming in a muddy pond, or just because the algorithm pushed so many lotuses my way that I accepted them as my favourite?
This might look like a very foolish comparison or incident, but I still feel it had a very big impact on me. It made me question all the things that I like or I want.
Do I really want them, or is the algorithm pushing the capitalism and consumerism right on my face and making me think that I wanted it all along?
Just a few months ago, everyone on the internet wanted matcha. Matcha this, matcha that, matcha coffee, normal matcha, matcha latte and loads of influencers coming and telling you it’s the first thing they take in the morning and the reason why they are so fit. Suddenly, it was a new aesthetic. The matcha prices were up, and people were still buying it, even though they hated the taste of it. They tried it because it was cool, and many even accepted it as their new favourite saying, ‘Oh, I love matcha.’ No, you don’t. The algorithm made it your favourite.
There are so many similar examples like this, like the Diet Coke. They turned it into a whole new aesthetic, combining it with a sugar-free, diet-conscious symbol that everyone has, at some point, bought and flexed (including me). Once you realise this, you keep introspecting on everything that you want.
I think the reason I sat down and wrote this blog is to make you all as aware as I have become to introspect before buying something impulsively, to pause when you feel your thoughts drifting away and becoming very similar to your feed. Go offline, shut down your phone and see if you really want it.
Are those really your thoughts or just another hashtag/reel you’ve scrolled an hour ago?
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Picture credits: Pinterest
Nothing is original. All is rumour. Ultimately you have to know your body well. Your body knows what it likes and what it dislikes. Your body sends you signals. It makes you nervous, it makes you feel stressed, if you think or do something that you do not like or is not aligned with what your purpose in life is. Everyone is walking on some path, whether they realize it or not. However, lack of commitment to the path is what leads to distraction, and addiction to low effort convenience is what makes people infer something intelligent and deterministic from random social media algorithmic feeds. Ultimately, everyone is hungry for connection and meaning, for intersubjective realities that truly belong to them and which they can call as their own truths. That's because everyone wants to feel that they are real, they are here, that they are connected, integrated as part of a common destiny, in which their position gives them their unique purpose. People already come vested with that purpose, but it's the illusion of free will that is exploited by market players to create a theatre of freedom and choices where people are made to believe that consumerist habits is what liberates them. However, the endless cycle will continue until people like you start asking questions like you have.