Your lack of community is making you subhuman and selfish. Your lack of community is making you afraid, vulnerable, and delusional.
The algorithms have told us to prioritize ourselves. They tell us to focus on our well being, but deeper, they tell us to focus on our image.
Online communities have shifted the narrative of what it means to truly have, or be in, a community. The curation of communities now means a space of shared aesthetics, interests, and images instead of real life bonds. Real life community requires mutual effort, accountability, and shared investment — things that people are clearly not willing to invest in anymore.
The effort it takes to show up, be authentic, participate and lift each other up is becoming too much for people. It is so incredibly easy to engage online, to express your opinion, follow creators, and maybe even leave a comment if you’re feeling brave. The internet offers this illusion of connection.
The internet mistakes belonging for comfort, and now your friends probably hate you for cancelling plans for the third time because you “don’t have the mental energy.” You’ll go home and scroll. This girl has a similar photo dump aesthetic. This girl is telling you where to shop.This girl is telling you how best to prioritize your rest and optimize your time for the gym, for work, for eating clean, for isolation.
We need community. We as a species were raised throughout history by villages. We knew people, we helped people, we sacrificed comfort for people. We gathered food for our sick, if we knew they could not do it themselves. It was immediate, inarguable, engrained in the way our societies functioned. We are, after all, social creatures.
Today, however, people are too busy curating their image to feed their sick. We are too busy in our ‘winter arcs’ and ‘clean girl eras’ to ask our friend if they’re okay after their loser boyfriend dumped them.
Selfishness, isolation, vulnerability — it is all profitable. We are stronger in packs, and yet we are slowly getting picked off one by one. Everything is commodified, like our friendship, our time, our care. We do not help each other for the sake of helping each other anymore. Your friend asks you to move, and you make up a flimsy excuse about work, about a pilates appointment, about not being able to “squeeze it in.” Later on, when you ask if anyone can give you a ride to the party, your friends will look at you with mild distaste.
You must pour into others first, and trust that they will pour back into you. You must let go of a self image that is taking 80% of your mental energy to curate and craft, to slip on like a mask every time you dare to be perceived. That energy is for your community. For the women around you who will be there when your loser boyfriend dumps you, when you need to talk, or when you need to move. Without that connection, who are we, truly? We are not an algorithm, nor a mood board. Your isolation is being commodified and made to seem like an aesthetic.
Go outside. Go help your friends.