We want to be different but in the same ways

Dear Reader,

There is no such thing as individuality on social media.

Ironically, in the last few years, authenticity, individualism, and uniqueness have become some of the most discussed ideas online.

Yet I see more performance on social media than in my last binge-watched Netflix show.

This has nothing to do with people lacking originality. It has everything to do with behaviour changing the moment people feel everyone is watching.

Most people carry an innate belief that they are unique, yet they express that uniqueness through a narrow set of social media templates. The same poses, the same rags-to-riches stories, the same female founder arcs, the same phrasing, the same visual grammar.

Social media platforms do not explicitly tell users how to be themselves. They do something far more subtle: they reward certain kinds of authenticity and ignore others.

Over time, people adjust. They learn what reads quickly, what gains engagement, and what earns affirmation. Content gets simplified, edges get softened, and expression becomes easier to decode. Slowly, behaviour adapts.

This is the tension at the centre of modern self-expression.

Individualism made more sense before social media, when expression was local, and feedback arrived slowly, if at all. Identity could remain partially unseen. Being oneself did not require an audience, let alone one measured in thousands.

Unfortunately and fortunately, we no longer live in that world.

Decades of social psychology show that the presence of an audience changes behaviour, whether that audience is physically present or imagined.

Research on conformity, social comparison, and self-presentation repeatedly reaches the same conclusion: people adapt their behaviour to what is rewarded, recognised, or socially intelligible.

Philosophers noticed this long before platforms existed. When behaviour is visible, it becomes performative. When performance is repeated, it starts to feel like identity.

Scale intensifies this effect.

When individuality has to pass through feeds, formats, and algorithms, it begins to change shape. Expression has to be recognisable, difference easy to decode, identity legible at a glance.

A contradiction follows.

People experience themselves as autonomous, yet respond to the same incentives, adopt the same aesthetics, and rehearse the same narratives as everyone else. Not because they are pretending, but because they’ve learned that visibility shapes expression.

This isn’t hypocrisy. It’s an adaptation.

Modern individualism isn’t artificial, but it is conditioned. Identity is no longer formed in private and then displayed. Increasingly, it is formed in public, refined through feedback, and internalised as the self. The irony is quiet but persistent.

The more individuality operates at scale, the more it must conform to be seen at all. Individualism today is not about being different, but about being recognisably different.

Cheers!

Akanksha