I spent an average of five hours a day on social media last week, so trust me when I tell you that identity is under attack. This may come as a surprise. After all, isn’t identity the hot topic right now? Isn’t everyone BIPOC or LGBTQIA+ or whatever? Sure. But we aren’t people anymore; we’re profiles. We’ve been reduced to symbols of ourselves. Selves that were once private, contradictory, formed through a slow and largely unsexy series of failures. Those selves are now public and shallow. We curate our interests and opinions — our identity — for the feed. We have become brands, and most of us are cheap knockoffs.
The existential crisis follows, naturally. Google tells me there are over two billion users on Instagram. How can I feel like a discrete individual in this overwhelming mob of people — people I must assume are as human, as special as I am? Descartes wrote “Cogito, ergo sum,” I think, therefore I am. But what if I don’t matter, regardless of whether I am? What meaning does my existence have in the wasteland of spectacle, scrolling past thirst traps, war videos, wedding announcements, AI-generated memes, absurd political commentary, all in one breathless swipe? And through this, I’m supposed to find meaning? How can I be content with myself when I see how glamorous the lives of the most beautiful, wealthy, spectacular individuals in this country are?
Panic ensues: Other people must know I exist; they must see me. If I am witnessed, I must be special. I must be unique, I must stand out in the crush. I must be spectacular. Not thoughtful — that’s boring. Spectacular! I must be raw, immediate, emotional — I must matter. And the only way to matter is to exist loudly, to provoke.
Enter: The Algorithm, our digital deity. The Algorithm can make you famous, can fulfill your wildest dreams; it can deliver everything you could possibly desire, as Lady Fortuna was thought to do in the days of old. But as a word of Faustian caution, we must beware: The Algorithm has no use for truth or justice. It only cares that we stay online for as long as possible, offering our eyeballs and attention ad infinitum. And we, the addicts that we are, comply.
Ethics, nuance, and decency have gone the way of the typewriter. They aren’t interesting enough. And in this moral vacuum, we have made the dangerous mistake of confusing popularity with authority. The blue verification check has replaced the framed PhD as the marker of significance — virality is the proof of claim. Influence has eclipsed experience.
We don’t seem bothered. How could we be? We have lost the ability to even discuss this social disorder, as political discourse continues to devolve into spectacle. America is engaged in a profound cultural collapse. We care more about appearing ethical than actually thinking about the nature of justice; we care more about performing morality than developing our capacity for reason. But instead of recognizing our declining intellectual quality as the urgent issue it is, the nighttime parade of talking heads convinces us that the real problem is polarization: a grand ideological divide between left and right. Between our team and their team. Between good and evil.
This flattening of moral responsibility into binary roles has made real politics nearly impossible. We have designated the gray zones as either black or white and rejected the possibility of good-faith disagreement. We label every dissent as betrayal and deride every misstep as a microaggression. And this moral schema is built upon the foundation of a deep delusion: the fantasy of fairness.
Many of our present-day crises stem from a refusal to accept that life is unfair in fundamental ways. Wealth, beauty, charisma, intellect — nothing is distributed fairly. They never have been. In an older, more religious society, we may have understood this hereditary lottery as the will of providence. Today, we call it injustice. We speak of systemic failure where randomness or luck might suffice. We moralize the inevitable.
This leads to a particularly American neurosis: the belief that any inequality is an affront to justice. “If one person suffers, another must be blamed.” We believe that if a person is born with less, then the entire system must be guilty. But systems are not Gods; governments do not create outcomes, they merely mediate them. And no political philosophy — no system of government — can erase the randomness of fortune. Pretending otherwise creates a politics of grievance.
This politics of grievance poisons democracy. If everyone is a victim of circumstance, and all ‘oppression’ must be the cause of ‘oppressors,’ then we must blame someone for our unhappiness; we must find a scapegoat. This sets the perfect conditions for populism: a political system that tells “the people” that their feelings are the highest truth. It collapses rational judgment into emotional absolutism. And populism always leads to what Alexis de Tocqueville called “tyranny of the majority,” where might makes right and identity politics, emotionalism, and majoritarianism are used to claim moral infallibility.
Populism has led to cancel culture, the grotesque act of symbolic hygiene draped in moral jeremiads. As identity is increasingly defined through consumption — endorsements, reposts — moral purity becomes achievable through aesthetics. Or so it seems. It is all so ridiculous. Take, for example, the word ‘Zionist,’ the modern linguistic placeholder for villainy. It is no longer a self-contained idea; the word does not refer to itself. It has become a symbol in our liturgy of slogans that now qualifies as political discourse.
What’s left? Not much. I’m obviously part of the problem: masquerading as above it all while turning myself into a “cheap knock-off brand” of public intellectual. David Brooks without the bowtie. Did it work? Do you see me as a symbol of erudition and intellect? I hope. But we both know I haven’t solved anything, and perhaps I haven’t even diagnosed the problem correctly. I don’t know how to make anything better; I doubt anyone does. All I know is that I enjoy living in a functioning democracy. But if we’re traveling down the road to populist spectacle (or worse), I wouldn’t mind being famous as well.
You are a very smart articulate fellow. Keep up the great work!