Posting "just because" is going extinct

This morning, I posted a mirror selfie.

Literally less than ten minutes later, I deleted it. Crazy work for someone whose story duration dashes once looked like 20 tiny ants. But those ten minutes alone felt like a fkn lifetime of mental gymnastics.

I had thought I looked nice, something we know (esp. as women) can feel like a mythic pull (“I woke up like this” does not happen as often as we were once promised).

But the second I posted, on CLOSE FRIENDS mind you, I felt anxious and to be honest, stupid.

Also, very exposed; why was I sharing this? Who even cared? Is this how I want to be perceived? Do I want to be perceived at all by anyone except my bf and maybe my sisters?

That spiral of second-guessing is exactly what The New Yorker recently called “posting ennui”, the creeping sense that casual posting doesn’t really make sense anymore.

And honestly, I find that so freaking sad.

I miss it. I miss seeing the silly little breakfast pics, the shower thoughts, the blurry snaps of a night out, the shameless mirror selfies and thirst traps. Posts that nobody cared about but everyone still wanted to share anyway. It’s lame that kind of posting now feels embarrassing, out of touch and even a little cringe.

Because what do we see on social media now, fifteen-plus years in? A feed that feels more like a news ticker than a scrapbook: influencers chasing high-budget polish, headlines announcing international horrors, AI-generated content filling in the gaps, and attention farmers feeding on outrage.

What used to be a place for small joys and silly documentation now feels like a stage where you risk ridicule every time you step on it.

And so we don’t.

Instead of posting, we scroll. We lurk. We voyeuristically watch others, the professionals, the shameless, the chaos agents, while keeping our own lives hidden.

And when we do post something personal, it comes with a vulnerability hangover. What if it’s cringe? What if no one cares? What if someone does care, in the wrong way? What if it’s insensitive due to the feelings of XYZ about ABC??

This is the paradox of posting ennui: social media is still omnipresent, but casual participation feels extinct.

The low-stakes, “just because” posting that made the early internet fun has been replaced by a culture where every post is either strategy or spectacle.

I truly respect those that keep at it, just for the love of the game. Others, like me, sheepishly dip in and out, torn between wanting to share, to create, and wanting to hide.

I guess for me, sometimes the only purpose posting serves is catharsis--taking something out of my brain and putting it into another container.

And maybe that’s ok. Like, that’s all that’s left, not posting for the world, but posting just to let it go, I guess.

But I can’t shake the grief of it all. And no I’m not being dramatic.

Because somewhere in the creator/ influencer economy and the Outrage Machine, we lost the stupid f*cking breakfast pics.

And the internet is a whole lot poorer without them. 

-Sophie Randell, Writer