She's got twenty thousand watching while she falls apart in real time. Crying on the bathroom floor but the ring light's positioned just right. The algorithm loves a breakdown if you tag it vulnerability Monetize the misery, darling, turn your crisis into profitability. Package up your trauma nice and neat, four-slide carousel of your defeat. The sponsors love authentic when it's profitable, when it's sellable, when it’s tolerable. Watch them build their kingdoms out of pixels and lies. Selling you the dream while they're barely getting by. It's a beautiful disaster, this connected lonely life. This connected, disconnected, perfectly curated life. He's teaching manifestation from his mother's basement. Stock photos of success he downloaded last Tuesday. The before and afters? Two different people, but nobody checks anymore. Nobody wants to check anymore. There's a couple-goals account, but he moved out three months back. She's still posting throwbacks from when things were good, or good enough to photograph. The comments don't know, the comments never know. They just want to believe in something, prefer the pretty lie to all the struggling. Count the likes like rosary beads; Pray to the engagement gods for relief. Everything's consumable, even your grief. Especially your grief. Package it up, tie it with a bow, let them watch you suffer just for the show. Watch them build their kingdoms out of pixels and lies. Selling you the dream while they're barely getting by. It's a beautiful disaster, this connected lonely life. This connected, disconnected, perfectly curated life. Delete, rewrite, delete again. Filter out the truth, let the fantasy begin. Five takes for spontaneous, ten for candid shots. We're all performing authenticity in our carefully constructed plots. Watch them build their kingdoms out of pixels and lies. Selling you the dream while they're barely getting by. It's a beautiful disaster, this connected lonely life. This connected, disconnected, perfectly curated strife. Keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through the highlight reels of people breaking in two. God forbid your life come across boring. In the end we're all just… Performing
