Member-only story
I had 300K followers on Instagram when I shut it down
This is the story of where social media fame took me, and how I broke free from its pressures.
For better or worse, we have all come to define our worth in terms of follower-counts. Having a lot of people waiting to hear what we have to say is seen as good and not having people interested is considered bad.
In an earlier age, being useful to a good number of people was a ticket to survival in our tribal reality. Those who were unable to assert their importance in the tribe got relegated to the sidelines and had access to fewer resources and often suffered because of it. Lions and tigers had strength, speed, claws and ferocity to help them survive in nature. Human beings had each other. Not having other human beings to stand with you could very well mean death.
However, because belonging was key to survival, people often sacrificed their individuality to do so. For example, an individual might lack belief in the religious claims or political beliefs of their tribe, but because expressing that skepticism would mean alienation, they might continue to lie and pretend so they don’t lose out on the support of their fellow tribesmen and die.
These days, thanks to the dynamics that govern the social web, many of us derive…
