There’s a type of video you’ve seen. Someone looks into the camera and speaks softly about presence, kindness, being real. Big philosophical words, delivered like confession. Then the camera cuts, and the person who was just preaching gentleness is cold to everyone in the room.

Let’s keep this hypothetical, because the pattern matters more than any one person.

This is the water now. Influencers who perform authenticity the way actors perform roles, except the role is “I’m not performing.” On camera: wisdom, vulnerability, depth. Off camera: a different person. The tells are hard to name. They come from experience, from watching long enough to feel the seam. Honestly, I don’t think the tells are easy to spot. That’s just how it is.

So why does it work? Because we live inside curated communication. One-way storytelling. Everything arrives through a screen: curated, edited, cropped, narrated. And it works. Then every few months the news breaks that someone was a facade all along, and everyone acts surprised, and then it happens again.

People buy it because of how we’re wired. We like feeling validated. We like feeling related to. When someone says what we already like, or says the thing we’re afraid to say out loud, we just believe them. That’s the whole engine. Not evidence. Recognition.

Then there’s the victim slot. This one’s nuanced, and that matters: some of it is legit. But there’s a pattern where the move is to blame a whole category. A gender. A political side. A country, a religion, a race. Or smaller and more personal: “I deserve better,” said after someone disagreed, or after someone refused an ask for valid reasons. “I didn’t feel supported.” “They were toxic.” I’ve watched this happen far more often than the reverse. The language of harm, used as a trump card. It’s hard to argue with someone’s feelings, which is exactly why it works as content.

And self-care, which started as something reasonable, curdling into plain selfishness. Hypothetical version: before, it’s “I need rest so I can show up for people.” After, it’s “I deserve better” deployed against anyone who asks anything of you. Same vocabulary, different religion. The words didn’t change. The direction did. Everything pointing inward.

None of this happens by accident. The platforms and their algorithms reward certain behavior, and people play to it. Creators cross some threshold and choose monetization over evolving as a person. They freeze. The audience they built expects a character, so they keep playing the character instead of becoming whoever they’d become next. It’s not just social media. The big media networks do the same thing, left and right. Find your audience type, then cater to it forever.

Not everyone, to be fair. But the cycle is real: the platforms hold the power, they care about their bottom line, and the incentives do the rest. I’ll say it plainly. Humanity is in a sad state here, and I think we’re moving backwards.

So how do I see through any of it? I’m autistic. I have a system. I’m not blind, and I figure some things out better than the normies. But it’s not magic. It’s discipline. Remind yourself there are always multiple parties, always different sides. The story changes completely if you hear the other side. I wasn’t there. I probably wasn’t there for most of what I’m judging. Perception might be wrong. Something probably wasn’t intended the way it landed. Nuances, all the way down.

And when that fails, which it does, because the tells aren’t easy, there’s a simpler rule: take everything with healthy skepticism, especially from someone you don’t know. That’s it. That’s the whole defense.

Photography is where I practice the opposite. I’ve never asked anyone to pose. I capture what I see. There’s a word for the middle ground, “plandid,” planned candid, and I’m not against setup. But the camera doesn’t get a character. It gets what’s there.

And me? I opted out of the game, mostly. I used to post for the metrics. Likes, shares, saves, follower counts. Then on one walk I realized it was wearing me out. Photography is my hobby. It’s not my work. Chasing the algorithm’s approval was making me tired and frustrated, especially once video started getting pushed over photos. So now I barely post. I still take hundreds, thousands of photos. For me. I like seeing the world from different angles. Framing it, composing it, editing it. And then it stays in my album.

Maybe the answer isn’t to beat the platform. Maybe it’s to stop letting it dictate. Learn to be okay with not being rewarded. Make the thing for yourself, and let the album be enough.