There’s a very particular kind of inertia that defines the modern human condition. It’s not the classical laziness of lying in bed all day and shirking one’s duties—though, let’s be honest, there’s plenty of that too.
I am talking about something more insidious: the state of mental paralysis caused by chronic overstimulation.
A kind of mental fatigue so constant that it feels like white noise. While we are really not anything particular - we’re thinking about everything, all the time, until we’re too mentally exhausted to do any activity that we might derive some kind of fulfillment from. We have developed this tendency to mistake this endless loop of internal monologue for action. We are perpetually online while being mentally checked out from the present.
Nowhere is this more evident than on social media, where our brains go to overdose on dopamine and insecurity at the same time. Of all the perpetrators, Instagram holds a particularly satanic place in the pantheon. Instagram is where aesthetic meets anxiety. It’s a museum of curated joy and artificial purpose. It’s also, more often than not, a constant reminder of all the things you’re not doing. Every scroll whispers: “Look what they’re doing. Why aren’t you?” And just like that, your morning coffee turns bitter and your day starts with a vague sense of failure.
Let’s be clear: Instagram didn’t knock on our doors and force itself into our lives like a debt collector. No one made us sign up. Nobody held a gun to our heads and said, “Post that sunset or else.” We downloaded it willingly, bright-eyed and Wi-Fi-connected, with no warning label about the psychological implications of publicly broadcasting our lives to hundreds—often thousands—of people who aren’t really watching, just briefly peeking between stories of other people who are also pretending to thrive.
And it worked—for a while. We were seen. Liked. Validated. The chemical hit was swift and delicious. But as with any cheap high, the crash was inevitable. The likes weren’t enough. The stories got stale. We needed more—more engagement, more reach, more meaning.
But why is it that we are now seeking meaning on feeds curated by an algorithm?
What actually grows there is comparison, and in that comparison lies a dire lack of originality, true identity and most of all, a clear lack of serenity and peace.
We don’t just use Instagram anymore. We live inside of it. Our phones have become prosthetic souls. We think of them as extensions of our bodies, and in many ways, they are—except unlike your arm or your leg, your phone also happens to be a surveillance device, a marketing tool, a popularity contest, a work portfolio, a panic button, and an existential crisis generator all in one. It’s like carrying a casino, a therapist, and a middle school cafeteria in your pocket.
No wonder we’re exhausted.
We’re not aware of how overstimulated we are. The brain, ever adaptable, has normalized the chaos. The endless stream of content—funny, sad, sexy, political, aesthetic, enraging—has no hierarchy anymore. It all blends into a soup of hyper-visual anxiety that we consume daily without ever stopping to ask if it’s making us better people.
Spoiler: it’s not.
And then there’s the grand irony: in an age where anyone can be a “creator,” very few people are actually creating. Most of us are too busy reacting. Consuming. Scrolling. The average user is drowning in other people’s versions of purpose and forgetting to live their own. We start the day thinking about all the things we want to do—write, paint, compose, cook, breathe—and then suddenly it’s 11:47 p.m. and we’re still on the toilet watching a golden retriever run.
But let me acknowledge the full picture. Yes, on the flip side, social media has created doors where there were once walls. Many brilliant artists, musicians, writers, activists, and weirdos have found their audience through these platforms. That’s a gift. It democratized reach. It allowed niche to go mainstream. The obscure became accessible. You could, in theory, change your life from your living room.
But here’s the irony: what opened the door also installed the lock. Now, you depend on the platform not just for visibility, but for income, opportunity, validation. You no longer create for yourself—you create for “engagement.” You’re not making what you love, you’re making what “performs.” You’re chasing an algorithm, not a muse. And the worst part? Most of us don’t even realize it’s happened.
We haven’t checked in with ourselves in ages. Is this still what I want to make? Is this still my art? Or have I become a content manager of my own personality? Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: when your creative worth is measured by likes, your work stops being art and becomes performance. That sacred, inner relationship with your art—arguably one of the most important bonds in a creative life—gets eroded. Traded. Monetized. Flattened.
What your art means to you should be sacred. Holy. Something immune to metrics. Something so integral to your sense of self that no algorithm, shadowban, or unfollowing can dent it. To hinge your creative identity on a tech platform’s valuation of your reach is to hand over your soul to a machine that doesn’t even know your name.
Bill Evans said it best: “Just go with truth and beauty, and forget the rest.” But how can we when we’ve been trained—trained—to seek beauty in pixels, and truth in attention?
Our very understanding of self has become externalized. We no longer ask ourselves “Who am I?” but instead, “How do I appear?” We’re not living lives anymore—we’re managing brands. Even solitude feels like a missed opportunity to post. The impulse to document has overtaken the instinct to experience. We’ve lost the ability to do things quietly, without fanfare, without audience. Even joy must be curated now.
And for what? So a stranger can comment “🔥🔥🔥” under your poem? So a friend you haven’t spoken to in five years can react to your vacation photo with a thumbs up? The economy of attention has devalued the currency of presence.
And once you move past the personal validation, the mild ego strokes of the perfectly filtered selfie, you find yourself even deeper in the pit: the doomscroll. This is the final form. After the high of creation and the crash of comparison, you enter the endless scroll—a trance-like state of passive consumption. No joy. No engagement. Just inertia. You’re not even sure what you’re looking for anymore. Hope? Distraction? Meaning? You just keep scrolling, because to stop would mean confronting the silence. And that’s worse.
What’s more sinister is that we know this. We joke about it. We post memes about it. We confess to it like addicts in a group chat. But we don’t stop. Because this system is sticky. It’s designed to be. And it plays directly into the part of us that craves stimulation over satisfaction.
This is the part that hurts the most: the short bursts of dopamine we get from our phones have made real life feel insufficient. Reading a book feels slow. Making a song feels exhausting. Sitting in silence feels unbearable. We’ve taught ourselves to prefer immediacy over immersion. And so when we finally get time to do the things we once claimed gave us meaning—write, draw, walk, touch grass—we find them hollow. Not because they are, but because we’ve become hollowed out by overstimulation.
And nobody warned us. There was no fine print when we downloaded the app. No one said, “By using this product you may experience existential detachment, aesthetic paralysis, and a gradual erosion of your ability to enjoy anything not endorsed by strangers.” No. We just clicked “accept” and posted our breakfast.
But now it’s time to ask better questions. Not “Is this trending?” but “Is this me?” Not “Will this go viral?” but “Do I care if it doesn’t?” Not “How does this look?” but “What does this mean?”
Because your life is not a feed. Your art is not a product. Your soul is not a metric.
We must reclaim ourselves—our time, our work, our thoughts. Not in some sanctimonious “delete all apps and live in the woods” way (unless that’s your thing). But in the quieter, harder way: by slowly, steadily turning down the volume on the noise. By making space for deep attention again. By remembering that the most valuable experiences in life are often the least visible.
This doesn’t mean we can’t use these tools. But they must be tools, not our temples. They must serve us, not own us. We must stop treating them like the default interface between ourselves and the world.
The best thing I ever did for my art, my peace, and my mental state was this: I stopped checking how things “perform.” I started asking if they felt true. I started caring more about how something felt to make than how it might look online. I started creating not for the algorithm, but for the part of me that feels most alive when I’m lost in the act of creating.
So yes—I’ll continue to complain about this mess we’ve built. But I’ll also continue to find ways to escape it. Not completely. Not always. But enough to remember what it feels like to be a person instead of a profile. An artist instead of a content producer. A soul instead of a brand.
Truth and beauty. Forget the rest.
It’s the only way forward.
With peace and insight
-Ameya