Went down this rabbit hole during lunch:
The Guardian: Our lives and identities have moved online - and it's driving us insane
Eugene Healey: Post-luxury status symbol #1: connected privacy
The New Yorker: it's cool to have no followers now
I have long said my hidden superpower is my ability to predict trends. I started noticing this superpower in fourth grade, when I got mocked for my extremely "uncool" outfits. The same outfits everyone was wearing by the middle of fifth grade. That pattern has repeated like clockwork ever since: I find some fashion thing I like, and a year and a half later, it is absolutely everywhere. I missed my calling. I should have moved to New York.
It's not just fashion, either. It's also things like this "it's cool not to have followers now" trend. I ditched the last of my social media accounts...about a year and a half ago. Even this blog is fairly anonymous; there's only one person in my real life who even knows it's mine. It's hosted on smol.pub but it's optimized for Gemini (if there is such a thing).
I am smirking at the fact that no one can signal how no-followers cool they are without having a social media account people can see and know is theirs. So this "no followers trend" thing is always going to be posturing. It's always going to be about being seen. I'm doing it too. This blog may not be connected to my IRL identity, but it's still me out here, writing things, being seen. It's all so self-conscious, so self-referential, so self-defeating.
Being seen isn't the *only* reason I blog, of course. But I could wander around in my own thoughts without ever hitting "submit." I could discover what I'm thinking by writing it down without being connected to the Internet. I'm choosing not to. And I'm also choosing not to think too hard about it.
Purple will be making a comeback for spring 2028, by the way.
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