Is it just me or does nothing feel good or fun anymore?

Not to sound pessimistic or depressing but I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Everything feels like an algorithm now. Numbers, stats, likes, comments. More than living, we are performing.

Nothing feels original anymore. Everything is being reproduced or recycled. The world has lost its colour and originality. We are all just puppets being controlled by money, greed, and endless consumption. We are creating but the joy has been taken out of it. We are creating to be seen, to sell, to be famous.

Has everything become more performative, or is it just me?

Even our hobbies don’t feel like hobbies anymore.

I remember when Instagram was just an app. I used to post for my love of taking pictures. I didn’t care about likes and comments. But now when I post a picture and it doesn’t get engagement, I start to doubt it. My mind spirals into overthinking.

Is the picture not good enough?

 Do I not look pretty enough?

 Hot enough?

And I honestly hate it.

I hate that we are such slaves to this thing that’s not even real.

As much as social media has done good for artists and small businesses, I fear we have paid a heavy price for it.

We are constantly performing instead of living.

Everything is a performance.

 Every picture, perfectly curated, not for the memories or fun of it but to show it to people who honestly don’t give a fuck about us. Complete strangers.

I felt this with my writing.

When I initially started my blog, I remember it was fun. I wrote to have fun. But then slowly it became about stats, numbers, SEO, algorithm and I was told by my marketing lead to create content that gets more clicks and I refused. It didn’t feel right to me because that’s not why I started writing. I was sent a list of highly ranked articles on Google and asked to create content. I was told there’s no niche for my blog because I was posting whatever I felt like based on what I was going through, what was on my mind.

To be honest, this is one of the main reasons I started being inconsistent. When I started thinking about it as a hobby that needed to be monetized, the stats, the numbers, the growth, it took the fun away from the writing. I started to dread it and put it off. I stepped away for months and sometimes a year at a time without posting because it started to drain me.

To this day I have not created a content calendar for my blog. The growth has been slow because I didn’t market it. I wanted something to be fun and not just broken down into a side hustle, making an income. Something to feed the soul.

Now that summer is officially here, I cannot look away from it.

I remember as a kid when summer was about having genuine fun. Looking back on old pictures, I see messy hair, breezy outfits, silly poses, unplanned days. We were just having fun.

Somewhere along the way, summer became performative.

There seems to be an unspoken pressure to “summer” correctly.

The itineraries and plans revolve around photographic value and aesthetics for Instagram over having genuine fun. I’m sure the fun is part of it, but the highly curated perfect version definitely seems to take priority now.

It’s more about proving that “my life is great” than actually living it.

Where you dine, where you stay, your outfits…everything is judged by how well it translates online.There’s this unwritten rule about how well we need to document our lives to prove we are doing great.

Under the guise of “Euro Summer” everyone is spotted at the same places, doing the same activities, wearing the same outfits, and posting the same version of summer.

The pressure starts before the trip.

The nails. The hair. The lashes. The perfect outfits. The not-so-candid suitcase photos.

It’s become a running joke that people cannot enjoy their vacation until they have the perfect photos and the worst part?

We know exactly what they mean.

Because we are the people.

We do it.

We perform endlessly and now I think we don’t even realize we are putting on a performance because it’s become part of who we are.

Even being real feels staged.

Even the candid shots we take are staged and performative.

It’s exhausting to feel like you’re on this stage with an invisible audience watching all the time.

Everything needs to be documented. Everything needs to be turned into proof.

Everything is content now.

I remember when vacation meant careless fun, unplanned moments, pure fun and relaxation. Now it’s about fit-check pictures, the perfect angle, the perfect lighting.

Just writing about it gives me anxiety.

Summer isn’t about summer anymore.

It’s about proving how well you live.

And honestly, I think the real luxury anymore isn’t going on a Euro Summer. It’s having a fun holiday even when nobody sees it.

We live in a strange world where we exist to create perfectly curated versions of ourselves online.

I am so grateful that I at least experienced a childhood with disposable cameras and taking pictures to look back on the memories that still make my heart nostalgic.

Now I know it doesn’t have to be performative if you don’t want it to be. I choose not to post all my pictures online, only the things and parts of life that I want people to see.

And you know the best part? I think we are all starting to wake up to it.

I see more and more conversations happening around this. People are choosing to share less. People are becoming more protective of their lives. More aware of how much of themselves they’ve been giving away to strangers online.

At the end of the day, we all have to protect our sanity from this nonsense.

I definitely don’t have it all figured out. I still struggle with my screen time. I still catch myself thinking about the perfect photo, the perfect caption, whether something is worth posting.

But at least now I notice it.

And maybe that’s the point.

Because once you start noticing how much of life has become a performance, it’s hard to unsee it.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.

But sometimes I think we live in a sad and pathetic world where so many people are experiencing things through a screen before they’ve even experienced them for themselves.

And that’s the part that makes me sad.

Not social media itself.

Just how much of our lives we’ve handed over to it.