A Crisis of Individuality

This is Seeing., a newsletter for photography, writing, and explorations by Johanna Renoth. I created it because I wanted a calm place online to share beautiful things and everything I’m curious about.

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Enjoy! - Johanna.

I’ve been feeling that things are stale for a while now. Everything looks and feels same-same: SEO-formatted blog posts, clichés everywhere, and people dressing in families of digital-human avatars. Algorithms have flattened our tastes and how we express ourselves online.

Authenticity is key online, though I see little of it.

Performative, yes. Genuine, little.

A Crisis of Individuality

I feel we’re living through a crisis of individuality. Genuine individuality, not the performative one we’ve come to know.

Most of Western societies (I can’t speak to the other ones) are challenged, when it comes to a grounded, healthy sense of individualism. It’s easier to conform and belong within the bounds of acceptability.

It’s okay to be a little different, though only in the way society condones it. Depending on where you live, the corridor of permissiveness is quite narrow.

Society, school, our families press us into forms that have little to do with who we are at our core. But, we’re meeting expectations and performing well, so that’s good.

Of course, belonging versus standing out is an age-old struggle for humanity.

Algorithms Enforce the Human Herd Mentality

What makes it more complicated at the present is that online culture rewards performative individuality (personal branding) on the one hand and adhering to expectations and behavioral codes as transmitted through the algorithm on the other hand.

That was a mouthful.

On the one hand, we get rewarded for being a personality online. On the other hand, what that personality looks like, when you perform it successfully, is affected by what algorithms think will garner engagement. That’s why we see the same video formats over and over again.

You can be a content creator in the nichiest niche. The way you will need to share your content to be successful will look a lot like what others are doing.

It’s that age-old struggle on steroids. Only that the digital landscape intensifies the herd mentality, algorithmically demands it.

Neither a brand nor algorithmic niches are healthy, grounded expressions of the self.

Knowing Who You Are and Being It in the Digital Age

It’s knowing who you are at your core away from what others tell you and living it.

Easier said than done. I certainly struggle with it.

Still, I sense great urgency around coming back to what it means to be a person and how to have a healthy relationship (and boundaries) around societal expectations.

Only as healthy, grounded individuals can we meet others as they are and form thriving communities.

Getting to know yourself as you truly, truly are - not the mask you put on in all sorts of occasions in your life - and honoring it, is more important than it’s ever been.

It’s healing. It’s also resistance to the algorithm.

And that’s always nice 😉

Have a lovely day,

Johanna

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