Some nights, I barely scroll and end up feeling sick. Not the kind of sick that sends you to the doctor, but the kind that lingers behind your eyes and in your stomach. A quick churn that builds with every swipe. Too many people, too many faces, too many opinions. It is the feeling of being submerged in noise. For an anxious person, a refresh of the scroll can more often than not feel like a ticking time bomb.
I tell myself I am just looking, catching up, searching for something useful. But within minutes, I forget what I came for. I start with intent and end in confusion. And then I remember that I came on here to post content. Now I feel silly. I don’t want to play this game anymore.
It’s a kind of emotional nausea. The body knows it before the mind does. It feels like the culmination of a thousand thoughts and emotions stirred up in the span of seconds, with nowhere to go but the gut. Now I can feel the acid coming up from dinner. Great, now I can’t sleep. Well, we got through the night, but we’re back at it the next day. Okay. Close the laptop. Close the phone. But the progress stops. Keep it open. I might lose my mind. It is a means to an end, I tell myself. That is the bargain.
I find myself getting angry at people I do not know and for reasons they cannot control. I do not like being told how to wake up, how to train, what to believe, how to optimize every waking second. I prefer to figure those things out for myself, somewhere quieter. But the noise gets in anyway. The feed keeps serving me what provokes me. So by the time it comes to focus on my own work, I am dejected. Certainly, there will be someone, somewhere, who feels those same cynical things about what I make.
But who cares about them? Well, me, because I’m human. I used to be scared of my own shadow. Of course, someone real could get to me.
I don’t necessarily want to be a content creator. I want to cook for people. I want to inspire others to cook and to explore the world. That is what gives me life. But life requires work. And work is a new dynamic. If meaningful content is a means to that end, well, that is the bargain.
Now I have to post this video. Now, I have to make another video. Now I have to check the comments. Now I have to respond to the comments. But I am still thinking about that idiot from earlier, and how we share the same playground. I just scrolled through nothing but junk for 15 minutes, and now I am about to throw my work into that same mix. What does that say about me?
I do not know. I sure am overthinking it, aren’t I?
It’s terrifying and impressive how much content already exists. How much more is yet to come. Every second brings another wave, another collection of thoughts, ideas, and creations tossed into the void.
We all live in the same machine now. Whether you cook, teach, rant, or sing, you’re performing in the same arena. Engineered systems decide who gets seen and who doesn’t. The algorithm measures your worth in numbers. Engagement. Retention.
Social media stopped being a platform and became the ground on which so much is built. Legacy media mines it for material. Businesses that exist in the physical world can’t survive without a digital presence. Political campaigns are made for the feed. The corner cafe needs a content calendar. The museum curates its pieces for Instagram. The concert is designed for the stream.
Everything bends toward the same logic, the same bid for attention. We’re all speaking the same language now, whether we’re selling homemade soap, our ideas, or promoting a show. What was once a tool for expression has become the medium through which most communication exists.
Some days, I open the tool and feel both pride and disgust. One second, I’m high on validation, the next, questioning everything. It isn’t rational, but it’s real. The system incentivizes us to crave that pulse, even when we know better.
We were promised freedom, democratization of the media. Anyone can share anything now. Anyone can connect with anyone. The gatekeepers vanished, and so did the filters. Everything is out there at once, everywhere, all the time. The masterpiece and the mimic sit side by side, and the equation cannot tell them apart.
It’s not all bad. There’s beauty in the access. Stories are being told now that never would have seen the light of day before. People who never had a stage now have one. But the math that amplifies noise doesn’t distinguish between good and bad, true and false, right and wrong. It doesn’t care about any of that. Only you do.
So what kind of work thrives inside that environment? The kind that adapts. The kind that performs. The kind that grabs attention faster than it asks for thought.
This means there’s a choice being made, conscious or not. A difference between content as craft and craft as content. The first starts with a calculation and ends with a performance. The second begins with curiosity and ends with something more honest. The first feeds the system. The second feeds the soul. And yet, the system pays better.
I try to protect the small ember of intention while the wind of the algorithm keeps blowing. I think about how attention used to have a longer span. How you once had to flip through a magazine. I raw-dogged a cross-country flight before it was a social media trend, completely by accident. No headphones, no book, nothing to fill the hours but the clouds. At the time it felt unbearable. Now I think about it often, with seatback screens, in-flight messaging, and Wi-Fi filling every empty moment.
Now everything bleeds together. Time, taste, thought. The feed never ends. This is what that sickness feels like. The emotional nausea of constant input. The more you see, the less you feel. The more you consume, the less you remember. It’s a kind of fullness that leaves you hollow.
And yet we keep going. We keep creating. We keep engaging. Searching for something real inside a burgeoning machine that scatters meaning into a million fragments. Sometimes I chop an onion just to remind myself what quiet focus feels like. The sound, the rhythm, the sting in the eyes. It demands presence. No scroll, no noise, just the task in front of me.
Maybe that’s the work now. Not to leave the void, but to move through it with care. To make something real, even when the system doesn’t reward it. To keep creating things that don’t beg to be consumed. To make something that won’t vanish tomorrow. To stay human while the world spins faster. To find peace in the act itself.
Maybe that’s the quiet rebellion. And maybe that’s enough.
SUGGESTED READING:
What the Heck Is Dubai Chocolate?
A viral chocolate bar wrapped in luxury, hype, and desert mystique. The story behind how value, taste, and attention collide in the modern food world.
Breadsticks and Country Clubs: Serving Power, Chasing Money
From chain dining rooms to private clubs, a look at how class and ambition shape the food world and the people who work within it.
