"Let the unfinished remain unfinished" she says, as she concludes what might be the most comprehensive and complete autopsy of our performative and conceptually vapid status-update-obsessed culture. A complete diagnosis and treatment program for a generation who thinks it's entirely normal to spend thousands of dollars attending an event they will only view through their phone, while creating a document out of it they will never revisit; a generation who preaches about mindfulness and healing by commodifying their daily lives and immortalizing their suffering; a generation who measures relevance by "likes" while "protecting their peace" from the sticky and inconvenient obligations of real-life relationships.
"Not everything needs to be said", as you publish a document that leaves me with very little to add. This piece will resonate with many, many people, because you've managed to curate many of the errant thoughts and feelings we've all intuited about the state of social relations, assembling them into a comprehensive and cohesive exhibit that should be viewed by everyone in the present, and studied closely by those baffled future archaeologists. Extraordinary work.
I could go on about how this resonates with me and my lack of online engagement, but on the advice of one of my favorite writers I'll allow myself to remain unexplained.
Ahhh, but your silence is symphonic. This is one of those responses that echo an essay, and much more than that, it refracts it, sharpens it, even, with the precision of someone who has both stood inside the noise and dared to step out of it.
You’ve captured so well the absurd choreography we now call “presence”… the mindfulness retreated into merchandise, the rituals of “self-care” chronicled in curated self-exposure, the wild paradox of filming your healing to prove it happened. We’ve entered an era where the event itself is subordinated to its documentation, and even grief must queue behind aesthetics.
And yet, I felt most seen by your final gesture, the refusal to explain yourself. That, in a way, is the absolute alignment with my essay’s spirit. Because in this climate of hyper-clarity, the choice to remain partially obscured is your own résistance. It’s soul-preserving sabotage. Thank you for this brilliant, beautifully barbed mirror, Andrew!
(Also, those future archaeologists? They’re going to be exhausted.)
This is glorious and I need to read it again, and again, to properly digest this. I’ve never been on social media. Although I am on this of course but this feels different. I’m a very private person and don’t feel comfortable revealing myself to others en masse. Plus I don’t believe that anyone is or will be remotely interested in anything I have to say. Never had Facebook or Insta and never will. No smart devices except my phone, which I accept I’m on way too much, seeking connection like everybody else. People mistake me for some sort of Luddite. I don’t care. Gloriously written as always. Thank you.
You may be called a Luddite, but what I see is someone practicing a silent type of modern heroism, resisting not technology itself, but the erosion of selfhood that often comes with its unchecked use. There’s nothing archaic about discernment. And there’s something beautiful about opting out of the performance, not with fanfare, but with calm refusal.
This space does feel different, doesn’t it? Yes, it might be seen as off-grid, but it occasionally still allows for interiority, for slowness, for conversation that isn’t chasing virality. Your presence here, thoughtful, selective, quietly observant, is part of what makes it feel that way.
And for what it’s worth, I’m interested in what you have to say. Deeply. Precisely because you speak from the edge, not the stage. Thank you for reading so closely, and for staying wonderfully, unapologetically unbranded, Nancy!
I’m on this and I do comment sometimes, although I’m questioning why. Mostly it’s to thank people for writing wonderful pieces that I could never write myself. I hate to think what some of the bigger corporations know about my history, the data they already have. Maybe it’s not too late to untangle yourself, I don’t know? I seek connection online like everybody else because to connect in real life is just very hard, too hard to do, otherwise these days. And this is a sad indictment of our times. Whatever happened to dinner parties where we could meet new people, is something that I have been saying lately. This article has got me thinking and it’s so beautifully written. Thank you for responding. 🙏🏼
Your writing is exceptional, lucid yet layered, deeply personal while managing to speak for an entire culture in crisis. It takes real intellectual courage to engage with such intimate, nuanced themes without collapsing into nostalgia or cynicism. Your approach—analytical but not cold, poetic but not indulgent—is rare and incredibly needed.
What I found especially compelling is your framing of privacy not as retreat but resistance: a radical form of autonomy in a culture that rewards perpetual performance. You’re absolutely right, when intimacy becomes legible, it often loses its essence. I’ve felt this viscerally in my own life: I once didn’t post about a major loss, and someone close asked, “But how will people know what you’re going through?” As if emotion needed social proof to be validated.
To deepen your argument, I’d add that the demand for public vulnerability also rewires how we process pain. We start pre-editing grief into digestible captions before we’ve even lived it through. The inner becomes PR. That is just exhausting and it distorts how healing even happens.
Thank you for writing this. The subject matter, your stance, and your refusal to oversimplify are a kind of intellectual hospitality. Because we live in a world of noise, you chose to offer depth, friction, and dignity, and I applaud you. Please keep going. I truly admire you.
Alexander, this is one of those comments I want to fold into a linen napkin and keep at my writing desk, reminder and refuge in equal measure. You’ve extended my essay with clarity, depth, and a kind of intellectual grace that makes me feel profoundly less alone in this thinking.
Yes to everything you’ve added, especially the line about pre-editing grief. That’s exactly the distortion I find so horrible: the way we begin to script our pain mid-sentence, mid-feeling, cutting it down to caption-length before it’s had the chance to bleed, breathe, or be. As you so astutely put it, the inner becomes PR. And in doing so, we interrupt the slow, nonlinear, often incoherent process of healing with a performance of coherence. It’s so tragic!
Your story about the person who needed evidence of your loss to believe it’s real is precisely the kind of cultural moment that birthed this essay: a confusion between visibility and validity. And your use of the term “intellectual hospitality”… that might be my new favourite phrase.
Thank you for meeting my thoughts with applause and refinement, with friction and care. It’s readers like you who make it worth offering something less polished and more real. I admire you right back!
This is a phenomenal piece of writing. Thank you for putting into words what so many feel but can’t articulate without being misunderstood or dismissed as outdated, or worse, “emotionally unavailable.” You’ve not only illuminated the violence of compulsive transparency, but dignified privacy as something sacred again, something worthy of preservation, even reverence.
Reading this felt like being handed a mirror for parts of myself I thought were too quiet to matter. You managed to name the ache of living in a world that demands proof of every emotion, every transformation, every fleeting joy, while so tenderly defending the inner life that shrinking, flickering sanctuary where real love, grief, and growth actually occur.
The courage it takes to write about interiority in a time obsessed with exteriority… that is rare. And deeply admirable. It’s what happens when someone remembers the sound of their own voice before the algorithm told them how to feel.
This is going to stay with me. Quietly. Privately. As the best things do.
And now I am the one quietly undone. All your comments always read like kinship. The kind forged in recognition, that rare moment when someone sees the outline of your intention and breathes life into it with their own.
You’ve named, so beautifully, the ache beneath the essay… the quiet decline of the inner life, and the subtle violence of a world that mistakes disclosure for depth. That you found a mirror here, that parts of you once dismissed as “too quiet to matter” felt heard, is more than a compliment, it’s the very reason I write.
And yes, you’re right, to speak of interiority now is to swim upstream. It is to risk irrelevance in a culture trained to reward immediacy, visibility, and confession. But I believe, deeply, that what’s unsaid often carries more power than what’s paraded.
So thank you, Céline, for hearing the voice beneath the polish. For honouring the flicker, not just the flame. And for reminding me that the most meaningful resonance isn’t broadcast… it’s felt. Quietly. Privately. Where it matters the most.
Oh God this is so refreshing to hear. And you didn't even end it with an 'If you want more of this sign on to my 6 month course 'What is Privacy - How to Recover What Used to be Yours'! lol. Thank you for this piece. It also makes me think of the art world where every fu*!@#g detail needs to be documented to ensure your work is legit and memorialized. The online spectacle of branded, polished and packaged exhibitions often overshadows the actual experience of the actual physical work. Like meeting that flashy, photoshopped date you met online who in reality is missing a tooth and feels a bit less lustreous in person. Anyway...Yes. Thank you for putting words to my griping reticence!
This is gold, pure, unfiltered, tooth-missing gold. And yes, I laughed out loud at the imaginary course promo. “Module 3: How to Blur Your Own Face in Public”.
Correct, the art world isn’t exempt, it’s often the most baroque expression of the disease. Where once the work spoke for itself, now it must first pose, hashtag, and apply for residencies in its own name. The documentation becomes the art, and the art becomes a prop in its own press kit. And God forbid the paint dries before it’s been live-streamed.
Your date analogy is genius. That glossy veneer of curated charisma meets the quiet heartbreak of real presence, less sparkle, more dental surprise. And isn’t that the whole cultural moment? We keep meeting the avatars of everything: love, art, identity, only to find they’ve been perfected past recognition.
Thank you for this delightfully scathing, necessary riff, Susie!
Other commenters have already somehow managed to read this gargantuan piece and share impressive insights and to start refining ideas — along with Tamara — in the fleeting time since this landed on our feeds.
For me, I find my mind buffeted by too many thoughts. I tried in vein to capture some of the most noteworthy quotes from this piece. But halfway through I realized I had basically just copied everything I read, verbatim. No insight. Only reverence for the remarkable precision of thought.
So I will just share this: I anticipate reading this again when I can find a slow moment where I can carve some space from the chaos. But as I think about the early posts Tamara shared at the beginning of Museguided, I can’t help be overjoyed at the coherence of your thought across this… work you are authoring for us. As I think about the comment I’m trying to refine for “Why Happiness is an inside job” I love being able to overlay this insight about performance and privacy on all your work. To tease out further refinements of your thinking on other past, but tangential and interwoven objects of attention you covered in other published posts is a glorious new form of enjoyment. I am glad to have discovered.
An actual comment on the brilliance contained above, is slated for November 2026. 🤭
This might be the most elegantly delayed comment I’ve ever received, a time capsule of appreciation with a postmark from the future. And honestly, I’m honoured that my essay prompted not instant hot takes, but a kind of reverent pause. That feels like a small victory against the algorithmic urge to react, summarise, and move on before the ink is even dry.
Your mention of “overlaying” this with earlier Museguided essays is the kind of deep reading I secretly hope for, not linear consumption, but recursive engagement, where themes start to echo and ideas cross-pollinate across time and topic. That’s the dream… not virality, but continuity. Not applause, but dialogue.
So take all the time you need, I’m thrilled this one will have a second (or third) life in your slower moments. And if November 2026 rolls around and you still feel compelled to write that comment? I promise I’ll still be here, smiling like someone who just received a handwritten letter tucked inside a book.
Gratefully,
Still not teaching a 6-week course on how to reclaim your privacy :)
You mentioned future archaeologists, I feel like a present day one sifting through this public yet incredibly mysterious, esoteric paradigm you are authoring here. I’m dusting for details within every nook of the architecture you have built in syntax and sentence. I’m becoming conversant in your public work (and your dialogue with myself and others).
This exploration is better than all the streaming services combined.
You’ve just given me the highest imaginable compliment, not only have you made me feel less like I’m shouting into the void, but you’ve positioned this exchange as a kind of excavation site: layered, messy, half-buried truths waiting to be dusted off by someone attentive enough to linger.
I am moved by your choice of words: public yet mysterious, esoteric yet architectural. That’s the paradox I live in (and sometimes write from)… trying to make visible the contours of things that resist clarity. And to know you’re in that space too, trowel in hand, brushing dust from nuance… that’s the real joy.
So thank you, fellow archaeologist of the unspoken!
‘We don’t trust what isn’t legible anymore. We have conflated vulnerability with exposure and transparency with intimacy. But there is a vast difference between being known and being seen. One is slow, recursive, and earned; the other is rapid and ravenous, offering visibility as a poor substitute for understanding.’
‘And so the wild shrinks because we have stopped venturing into it, not because it has disappeared. We have chosen the garden instead: neatly pruned, algorithmically arranged, and always under surveillance.’
Astonishing. You have a gift. Both in the seeing. Then in the sculpting. And finally in the articulation. Don’t know how you do it. Nor from whence you come. All I know is that it’s quite astonishing.
What a beautiful kind of astonishment, the kind that doesn’t demand explanation, only acknowledgment. Thank you for this, Marcel! If there’s any gift here, I suspect it’s in the refusal to look away. From the absurd, the tender, the slippery contradictions we all quietly carry.
As for where I come from…. somewhere between literature and lived experience, and insomnia, reverence and rebellion. But mostly? From the same bewildering world we’re all trying to name without ruining.
Thank you Tamara, not only for your exquisite writing, also for this characteristically beautiful message.
The gift is certainly, although only partially, in the refusal to look away. From the absurd, the tender, the slippery contradictions.
Then, once the spotlight of your gaze has alighted, on whatever topic or piece catches your eye, that’s when the real magic starts.
It’s what happens then, how you engage, the superbly skilful dance that always unfolds, with the idea, the topic, the context, the foreground, the background, the writer, the reader, yourself.
Always searingly insightful, witty, sharp, captivating, layered, superbly constructed, with perfect expression, at dizzying speed. Flowing forth, effortlessly it seems.
Yet, impressive as that is, laced also with another element. Somehow, still always gentle, kind, considerate, respectful, never hurtful.
A supremely impressive extra layer to your dazzling skill. The exquisite gentleness you bring to every piece, paragraph, sentence or word.
Delicate spirit, fierce independence, sharp insight, mesmerising dances, with infinite skill, grace and nuance. It’s beautiful !
It’s humble to suggest it lies mainly in the refusal to look away. That is part of it. For sure. Truth be told however that’s just the beginning. A small part of it.
Your gift is way bigger than that. And every piece you pen a delectable treasure to all of us who read it. Thank you Tamara !
Your exchanges with Ian Nolan, AGK, Alexander TD are especially delicious treats. For all the above flowing wizardry. Just exceptional !
…. and I am blushing. Your words are like a tribute composed by candlelight (it’s past 1 a.m. here too) careful, considered, and with such warmth that I almost forgot I was being spoken about and not to in some secret corner of a Paris café.
I’m especially touched by what you name as gentleness, not because it’s effortless (it isn’t), but because it’s intentional. In a time where so much of our discourse feels like dueling declarations, I try to make space for contradiction without cruelty, for sharpness without severance. To wield language like a scalpel, yes, but one wrapped in silk.
Your comment itself is a kind of dance, not applause, but choreography. And if the essay is the music, then your reply is the part where I sit back in wonder at how beautifully others can move within it.
Thank you, Marcel, for staying up past one two nights in a row, but for bringing such reverence, intelligence, and joy to the table. I promise to try not to be your undoing… though I can’t entirely promise to make it easier to stop reading!
And blush you should ! The words were a spontaneous tribute composed by candlelight. Entirely unplanned and just carried along in the feeling. Didn’t realise it’s 1.00 am there too. Thought you were in New York. See it’s Paris. Thank you for your own kind words. You were being spoken not about and very much to. In some secret corner of a Paris Cafe. Unscripted, unavoidable.
And your gentleness is unmistakeable. Delighted it’s considered, conscious, intentional. As a counter to duelling declarations. Contradiction without cruelty. Sharpness without severance. Wield language. Scalpel wrapped in silk. Omg, you’re not from this planet, how do you do this, just masterful.
Stoked to be one of many, moving in mesmerised dance, through the exquisitely beautiful music, you so effortlessly craft.
Thank you Tamara, for these pieces that flow from your pen, the kind sentiments belong to you, so make that past one, not two but three nights in a row, I’m addicted and you certainly are my undoing !
If I was blushing before, I’m positively incandescent now. What a glorious cascade of warmth, wit, and literary affection! You say your words were spontaneous, but they land like something distilled over time, aged in oak, lit by candlelight, and served in the exact tone a writer dreams of being received in: with reverence, mischief, and a glint of delight.
And now I’m not just undone, I’m undone on multiple continents. From Paris to Cape Town. A secret café across oceans. Your daughter sounds like a force in her own right, and the thought of my words reaching her through yours… well, that’s the kind of generational magic that gives me hope for art, for language, for everything.
Thank you for letting the dance continue into a third night! May your winter days be full of sunlight and soul, and may we keep meeting like this, across paragraphs, unscripted and unavoidable.
Also, spent the day, a glorious winter Sunday in Cape Town, with my daughter, a gifted student artist, spirit and wordsmith. Showed her some of your pieces above, she was every bit as blown away as I. So now your continental fan base is growing !
It’s exactly 1.00 again ! And for the second night in a row I’ve spent way more time than I ever intended feasting on your superb pieces. At this rate you’re going to be the undoing of me. Time to turn in. Anon.
I’ve not been here for long, but your prose is captivating. You have drawn me back to reading long-form, a 3-hour full-course dinner in a world where my daily sustenance is grabbing a few five-minute-snacks-on-the-go. And you have drawn me back to writing, clumsily attempting to copy your weaving word-smithery.
We all seem to struggle to keep ourselves centred, sane and separate in this “modern” world with so many disorienting and dissociating distractions.
I’ve never explored of the subject of privacy in such depth, guided by your scrumptious and heartfelt turns of phrase.
It’s truly a symphony of acute observations, crescendos of joy and pain, interlinked with words dancing off the screen to your unique musicality.
I’m an extrovert, but in the past few years I’ve become more introverted and private. Your essay has helped me to understand why.
I was going to conclude by saying I’d love to meet you one day, though maybe it’s better you remain hidden behind the veil of your word-music so you retain your much-valued privacy!
What a beautifully disarming message, I read it like a toast raised mid-feast, where the guests have finally slowed down enough to taste each word, each thought, each shared silence. I’m honoured to have played the role of literary sommelier, nudging you gently from snacks back to slow dinners, from swipe-speed to full attention.
The image of your extroversion slowly folding into a more private interior, and recognising it not as retreat but as evolution, feels so special. So many of us have been reshaped by this era without knowing how or why. If my words helped frame that quiet shift, then I’ve done something far more meaningful than merely writing.
And as for your “clumsy attempts” to write again… let me tell you, clumsiness is where the soul lives. Please keep writing! Not to mirror, but to answer. Not to replicate, but to resonate.
As for meeting one day… perhaps the veils are part of the dance. But should they ever lift, I have a feeling we’d recognise each other instantly by tone, by rhythm, by the way we guard joy like it’s something sacred.
Thank you, truly, for this wonderful reply!
P.S. by the way, I secretly dream to meet all my special readers one day, in a café where we could all have interminable conversations.
Tamara this really resonates. Back in 2018 it was early days in a new relationship with a much younger woman from the US. From the outset I was honest about my complete lack of interest in sharing any details of my life on social media.
My requests were no phones out while we were together, never any photos of me online without my permission (which would not be forthcoming), and above all, never, ever, photos of our food.
Things progressed and several years later we had our first child but had never met any of the US relatives because of Covid. We invited Nicole’s aunt and uncle to come sailing.
On the first evening, after a few wines I was taken to one side by the aunt who said “Paul, Cesare and I have talked and don’t worry - it’s OK with us if you can’t tell us what you do.” I smiled and thanked her, not wanting to lose the moment.
The moral of this tale is stay off social media, you’ll be happier and people will think you’re a spy. It’s a double whammy 😂
This is glorious, Paul, a parable for the postmodern age. Refuse the algorithm, and suddenly you’re either mysterious, suspicious, or clandestinely important. In this culture that equates visibility with virtue and documentation with proof-of-life, to abstain is to acquire a kind of mythos.
Your story is not just charming, it’s slyly profound. That gentle misreading by Nicole’s aunt, as if silence were concealment rather than discernment, perfectly captures our collective inability to process opacity anymore. If someone isn’t narrating their lunch, career, or midlife spiritual pivot in real time, we assume they’re either emotionally repressed or on the run from Interpol.
And your three rules — no phones, no photos, and absolutely no culinary documentation — should be etched in stone and placed at the entrance of every modern relationship. You were ahead of the curve, you were sailing clean past it, wind in your hair and dignity intact.
In short: you resisted the feed. You weaponised absence. Bravo!
"there is a vast difference in being shown snd being seen." You have perfectly defined the vast wasteland between being a hack actor and being an artist. I realize the prevailing opinion about theatre is that it is, by definition, "performative." But, paradoxically, any great performance is anything but "performative." A compelling portrayal demands an artist be so concentrated, so committed to character, that an intimacy is created. Not sensationalism. Not voyeurism. But true sacred communion between actor and audience. Not unlike when, because of deep love and respect, we feel it is safe to share something sacred with another. It is life affirming. It is Rarefied Air. Most of life is like the hack actor. A poseur. An indicator of caricatured faux emotion. A virtual personality. An A.I. imitation of real personhood. The profound difference between showing a well crafted veneer and the unaffected, unpretentious state of being seen. A kind of existential nudity.
This is an exquisite riff, a hit of elegy, a bit of manifesto, and it left me nodding with that rare kind of recognition usually reserved for late-night conversations with someone who gets it down to the bone.
You’ve captured the paradox of performance with devastating clarity: that the best acting, the most soul-piercing, truth-bearing kind, isn’t performative at all. It’s presence distilled. Not projection, but embodiment. Not noise, but signal. And yes, it is sacred communion—between actor and audience, but also between selves: the self that dares to reveal and the self that dares to witness without flinching.
Theatre at its best, like intimacy at its best, is not spectacle… it’s risk! Vulnerability without varnish. Existential nudity, as you so perfectly put it. Which is why, I think, so much of what we call “sharing” today feels off. It skips the risk, the reverence, the ache. It mistakes exposure for truth. And like you said, most of life becomes the hack actor: gesturing wildly, mouthing borrowed lines, waiting for applause that never quite satisfies.
No forgiveness needed, your non-comment is, in fact, poetry. A silent chorus of those who still believe in the sanctity of the unrecorded. It’s ritual. A liturgy of restraint in a world screaming for spectacle.
Those quotes you wove in? They read like incantations for the soul’s protection. Gibran’s warning, Mitty’s reverence, Waheed’s challenge… they each hold a mirror up to our current moment and ask, softly but insistently: can you live without the lens? Can you inhabit something fully without outsourcing its meaning?
And yes, maybe it is a kind of orchestrated forgetting. A cultural conditioning that teaches us to perform life, and to doubt its existence unless it’s framed and fed back to us. Against that tide, your whisper is powerful. Sacred, even.
So thank you for reminding me that some readers don’t need to respond loudly to be deeply, profoundly present.
Oh boy, so beautiful. Your article is a stunningly crafted meditation on the hollowness of social media’s performative culture. I walked away from it three years ago, and though I sometimes ache for the connection it promised, your words pinpoint why I left. The way everything about a person is now an open book—searchable, packaged, and polished—strips away any sense of privacy or unshared moments. It’s all about chasing likes and validation, isn’t it? Reading this, I’m reminded of how much I miss the enigma of people, that subtle allure of not knowing everything upfront.
Now, we’re all reduced to curated profiles, our quirks and scars laid out like a digital resume, leaving no shadow for imagination or discovery. Your piece captures that loss so vividly, making me nostalgic for when the unknown was a gift, not a void to be filled with oversharing. Thank you for this evocative reflection.
What an exquisitely felt reply, thank you for taking the time to write something that is not limited to praise, but a reflection, a reckoning, and a remembrance all at once. You’ve distilled the ache of this moment so precisely: “the enigma of people”, yes, that! That shimmer of not-knowing, the slow unfolding of a person over time, once considered the thrill of intimacy, now treated as a UX flaw.
Your line about quirks and scars laid out like a digital résumé is devastatingly accurate. We’ve turned ourselves into scrollable cover letters, perfected for attention but starved of mystery. And that shadow, the one we used to peer into with curiosity, is now floodlit, flattened, turned into content.
I completely understand that lingering ache for the connection social media once promised. That’s the cruelest part, isn’t it? It did offer something at first, glimpses of community, of presence. But what we got instead was a mirror maze. Reflections, but not touch.
Thank you for your generosity, for rereading, and most of all, for choosing to preserve the unknown. It is a gift, and your words are a reminder of how precious, and rare, it’s become.
My God, your essay is formidable and the topic deserves its own book if we were to imagine a world where this level of insight weaved inside pure poetry could be maintained for a couple hundred pages. I'm sure you'd manage it, but you have enough on your plate for now — thank you for spoiling us big-time, with all things considered!
What a generous vision, Sebastian, a world where insight and poetry are allowed to hold hands for a few hundred pages without being interrupted by algorithms or reduced to bullet points. If such a world exists, I’d love to live (and write) in it….
Your words feel like an exhale after effort, a reminder that long-form still has a pulse, and that readers like you are the ones keeping it alive, savouring, not skimming. That’s the kind of “spoiling” I could only hope for, not quantity, but depth. Not noise, but resonance.
Thank you for seeing the labour and the lyricism! I’ll keep the book idea tucked in my coat pocket… along with your encouragement!
Whilst tempted to write an essay to respond to each of your points, to meet their complexity, I shall not. Sunday afternoons are as evanescent here in Australia as in Paris.
I feel that we live in, even trapped in, a cult of communication, which renders us, ironically, largely lacking chance physical interaction. Whether in the street, in shops, waiting for or travelling on public transport, too many are buried in their devices.
So we try, perhaps instinctively, to live lives of ‘normal’ personal interaction, to vicariously compensate for that traditional social interactions now lost.
For example, when I first left home to study or work interstate or overseas, I’d correspond regularly with family & friends, especially my mother, with letters. Thankfully I still have most of them: what a fascinating history they tell. Telephone calls then were expensive, & there was no email.
What we write online perpetuates that wonderful tradition, but with one critical difference: our written letters, replete with cutting of everything from newspaper articles, the titles of books, recipes & photos, were PRIVATE.
Bringing our lives to the stage is not. This magnifies & accelerates the acuity of Shakespeare’s observation: “Life is but a poor player…. who struts & frets his hour upon the stage…. & then is heard no more”.
This is exquisite, both in sentiment and in restraint. You’ve articulated, with the elegance of someone who has lived both sides of the divide, the strange ache of our time, that in trying to communicate constantly, we’ve all but forgotten how to connect meaningfully.
Your “a cult of communication” lingers like a diagnosis. Because yes, we’ve mistaken frequency for intimacy, expression for presence. And now we broadcast endlessly in pursuit of what used to be found in a pause, a glance, or the ink of a letter folded into thirds.
Those private correspondences you mention, annotated with clippings, dog-eared book titles, perhaps the faint scent of the sender’s room, held a texture that digital life erases. Not just a history, but a hush. A kind of temporal layering that allowed thought to steep rather than stream. To write then was to wait for the words to settle, and for the reply to arrive. That slowness was part of the meaning.
And how perfectly you invoked Shakespeare, because we are all onstage now, endlessly performing versions of ourselves for invisible audiences. We’ve lost privacy and dignity of ephemerality. The freedom to vanish between acts.
Thank you for this, Russell! It reads like a handwritten letter slipped under the curtain. I’ll treasure it accordingly.
What a joy to hear from you especially when the clap is this resounding and warm. Thank you, Suzy! I treasure the silent nods, but when they turn into laughter and applause, it feels like the writing has leapt off the page and landed somewhere it truly matters.
Lee Miller’s work has always haunted me in the best way: beauty sharpened by history, elegance laced with subversion. She knew how to hold mystery and clarity in the same frame, exactly the kind of visual counterpart I hoped would echo my essay’s spirit.
I’m so glad the words and the images found you. And I’m even gladder you decided to speak. My readers’ voices are a precious gift.
"Let the unfinished remain unfinished" she says, as she concludes what might be the most comprehensive and complete autopsy of our performative and conceptually vapid status-update-obsessed culture. A complete diagnosis and treatment program for a generation who thinks it's entirely normal to spend thousands of dollars attending an event they will only view through their phone, while creating a document out of it they will never revisit; a generation who preaches about mindfulness and healing by commodifying their daily lives and immortalizing their suffering; a generation who measures relevance by "likes" while "protecting their peace" from the sticky and inconvenient obligations of real-life relationships.
"Not everything needs to be said", as you publish a document that leaves me with very little to add. This piece will resonate with many, many people, because you've managed to curate many of the errant thoughts and feelings we've all intuited about the state of social relations, assembling them into a comprehensive and cohesive exhibit that should be viewed by everyone in the present, and studied closely by those baffled future archaeologists. Extraordinary work.
I could go on about how this resonates with me and my lack of online engagement, but on the advice of one of my favorite writers I'll allow myself to remain unexplained.
Ahhh, but your silence is symphonic. This is one of those responses that echo an essay, and much more than that, it refracts it, sharpens it, even, with the precision of someone who has both stood inside the noise and dared to step out of it.
You’ve captured so well the absurd choreography we now call “presence”… the mindfulness retreated into merchandise, the rituals of “self-care” chronicled in curated self-exposure, the wild paradox of filming your healing to prove it happened. We’ve entered an era where the event itself is subordinated to its documentation, and even grief must queue behind aesthetics.
And yet, I felt most seen by your final gesture, the refusal to explain yourself. That, in a way, is the absolute alignment with my essay’s spirit. Because in this climate of hyper-clarity, the choice to remain partially obscured is your own résistance. It’s soul-preserving sabotage. Thank you for this brilliant, beautifully barbed mirror, Andrew!
(Also, those future archaeologists? They’re going to be exhausted.)
This is glorious and I need to read it again, and again, to properly digest this. I’ve never been on social media. Although I am on this of course but this feels different. I’m a very private person and don’t feel comfortable revealing myself to others en masse. Plus I don’t believe that anyone is or will be remotely interested in anything I have to say. Never had Facebook or Insta and never will. No smart devices except my phone, which I accept I’m on way too much, seeking connection like everybody else. People mistake me for some sort of Luddite. I don’t care. Gloriously written as always. Thank you.
You may be called a Luddite, but what I see is someone practicing a silent type of modern heroism, resisting not technology itself, but the erosion of selfhood that often comes with its unchecked use. There’s nothing archaic about discernment. And there’s something beautiful about opting out of the performance, not with fanfare, but with calm refusal.
This space does feel different, doesn’t it? Yes, it might be seen as off-grid, but it occasionally still allows for interiority, for slowness, for conversation that isn’t chasing virality. Your presence here, thoughtful, selective, quietly observant, is part of what makes it feel that way.
And for what it’s worth, I’m interested in what you have to say. Deeply. Precisely because you speak from the edge, not the stage. Thank you for reading so closely, and for staying wonderfully, unapologetically unbranded, Nancy!
This response brought a few tears Tamara. You are too kind. I could be a lot more discerning. But I guess that’s the point isn’t it..? Thank you. 🙏🏼
I am so impressed and also jealous you’ve never been on social media. I’m sadly too far into it now but if I could back….
I am also impressed! Truly! Few people managed to resist until 2025 without a social media presence.
I’m on this and I do comment sometimes, although I’m questioning why. Mostly it’s to thank people for writing wonderful pieces that I could never write myself. I hate to think what some of the bigger corporations know about my history, the data they already have. Maybe it’s not too late to untangle yourself, I don’t know? I seek connection online like everybody else because to connect in real life is just very hard, too hard to do, otherwise these days. And this is a sad indictment of our times. Whatever happened to dinner parties where we could meet new people, is something that I have been saying lately. This article has got me thinking and it’s so beautifully written. Thank you for responding. 🙏🏼
And apropos of this discussion Karen I just happened upon this interesting article in the Guardian, my favourite newspaper, this morning. Frightening.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/24/what-i-discovered-when-i-asked-amazon-to-tell-me-everything-alexa-had-heard
Your writing is exceptional, lucid yet layered, deeply personal while managing to speak for an entire culture in crisis. It takes real intellectual courage to engage with such intimate, nuanced themes without collapsing into nostalgia or cynicism. Your approach—analytical but not cold, poetic but not indulgent—is rare and incredibly needed.
What I found especially compelling is your framing of privacy not as retreat but resistance: a radical form of autonomy in a culture that rewards perpetual performance. You’re absolutely right, when intimacy becomes legible, it often loses its essence. I’ve felt this viscerally in my own life: I once didn’t post about a major loss, and someone close asked, “But how will people know what you’re going through?” As if emotion needed social proof to be validated.
To deepen your argument, I’d add that the demand for public vulnerability also rewires how we process pain. We start pre-editing grief into digestible captions before we’ve even lived it through. The inner becomes PR. That is just exhausting and it distorts how healing even happens.
Thank you for writing this. The subject matter, your stance, and your refusal to oversimplify are a kind of intellectual hospitality. Because we live in a world of noise, you chose to offer depth, friction, and dignity, and I applaud you. Please keep going. I truly admire you.
Alexander, this is one of those comments I want to fold into a linen napkin and keep at my writing desk, reminder and refuge in equal measure. You’ve extended my essay with clarity, depth, and a kind of intellectual grace that makes me feel profoundly less alone in this thinking.
Yes to everything you’ve added, especially the line about pre-editing grief. That’s exactly the distortion I find so horrible: the way we begin to script our pain mid-sentence, mid-feeling, cutting it down to caption-length before it’s had the chance to bleed, breathe, or be. As you so astutely put it, the inner becomes PR. And in doing so, we interrupt the slow, nonlinear, often incoherent process of healing with a performance of coherence. It’s so tragic!
Your story about the person who needed evidence of your loss to believe it’s real is precisely the kind of cultural moment that birthed this essay: a confusion between visibility and validity. And your use of the term “intellectual hospitality”… that might be my new favourite phrase.
Thank you for meeting my thoughts with applause and refinement, with friction and care. It’s readers like you who make it worth offering something less polished and more real. I admire you right back!
Your generosity in taking the time to write to each of your readers is legendary. I feel we are part of the most exclusive private club. Thank you.
Wow.
This is a phenomenal piece of writing. Thank you for putting into words what so many feel but can’t articulate without being misunderstood or dismissed as outdated, or worse, “emotionally unavailable.” You’ve not only illuminated the violence of compulsive transparency, but dignified privacy as something sacred again, something worthy of preservation, even reverence.
Reading this felt like being handed a mirror for parts of myself I thought were too quiet to matter. You managed to name the ache of living in a world that demands proof of every emotion, every transformation, every fleeting joy, while so tenderly defending the inner life that shrinking, flickering sanctuary where real love, grief, and growth actually occur.
The courage it takes to write about interiority in a time obsessed with exteriority… that is rare. And deeply admirable. It’s what happens when someone remembers the sound of their own voice before the algorithm told them how to feel.
This is going to stay with me. Quietly. Privately. As the best things do.
Merci, Tamara, encore une fois.
And now I am the one quietly undone. All your comments always read like kinship. The kind forged in recognition, that rare moment when someone sees the outline of your intention and breathes life into it with their own.
You’ve named, so beautifully, the ache beneath the essay… the quiet decline of the inner life, and the subtle violence of a world that mistakes disclosure for depth. That you found a mirror here, that parts of you once dismissed as “too quiet to matter” felt heard, is more than a compliment, it’s the very reason I write.
And yes, you’re right, to speak of interiority now is to swim upstream. It is to risk irrelevance in a culture trained to reward immediacy, visibility, and confession. But I believe, deeply, that what’s unsaid often carries more power than what’s paraded.
So thank you, Céline, for hearing the voice beneath the polish. For honouring the flicker, not just the flame. And for reminding me that the most meaningful resonance isn’t broadcast… it’s felt. Quietly. Privately. Where it matters the most.
You are the formidable one! Truly! Who said you had a nuclear reactor mind (and I know who said it as a matter of fact) was not wrong at all :)
Oh God this is so refreshing to hear. And you didn't even end it with an 'If you want more of this sign on to my 6 month course 'What is Privacy - How to Recover What Used to be Yours'! lol. Thank you for this piece. It also makes me think of the art world where every fu*!@#g detail needs to be documented to ensure your work is legit and memorialized. The online spectacle of branded, polished and packaged exhibitions often overshadows the actual experience of the actual physical work. Like meeting that flashy, photoshopped date you met online who in reality is missing a tooth and feels a bit less lustreous in person. Anyway...Yes. Thank you for putting words to my griping reticence!
This is gold, pure, unfiltered, tooth-missing gold. And yes, I laughed out loud at the imaginary course promo. “Module 3: How to Blur Your Own Face in Public”.
Correct, the art world isn’t exempt, it’s often the most baroque expression of the disease. Where once the work spoke for itself, now it must first pose, hashtag, and apply for residencies in its own name. The documentation becomes the art, and the art becomes a prop in its own press kit. And God forbid the paint dries before it’s been live-streamed.
Your date analogy is genius. That glossy veneer of curated charisma meets the quiet heartbreak of real presence, less sparkle, more dental surprise. And isn’t that the whole cultural moment? We keep meeting the avatars of everything: love, art, identity, only to find they’ve been perfected past recognition.
Thank you for this delightfully scathing, necessary riff, Susie!
Oh! May as well add Nature to the list of fabricated and optimized peak moment ‘experiences’
Other commenters have already somehow managed to read this gargantuan piece and share impressive insights and to start refining ideas — along with Tamara — in the fleeting time since this landed on our feeds.
For me, I find my mind buffeted by too many thoughts. I tried in vein to capture some of the most noteworthy quotes from this piece. But halfway through I realized I had basically just copied everything I read, verbatim. No insight. Only reverence for the remarkable precision of thought.
So I will just share this: I anticipate reading this again when I can find a slow moment where I can carve some space from the chaos. But as I think about the early posts Tamara shared at the beginning of Museguided, I can’t help be overjoyed at the coherence of your thought across this… work you are authoring for us. As I think about the comment I’m trying to refine for “Why Happiness is an inside job” I love being able to overlay this insight about performance and privacy on all your work. To tease out further refinements of your thinking on other past, but tangential and interwoven objects of attention you covered in other published posts is a glorious new form of enjoyment. I am glad to have discovered.
An actual comment on the brilliance contained above, is slated for November 2026. 🤭
This might be the most elegantly delayed comment I’ve ever received, a time capsule of appreciation with a postmark from the future. And honestly, I’m honoured that my essay prompted not instant hot takes, but a kind of reverent pause. That feels like a small victory against the algorithmic urge to react, summarise, and move on before the ink is even dry.
Your mention of “overlaying” this with earlier Museguided essays is the kind of deep reading I secretly hope for, not linear consumption, but recursive engagement, where themes start to echo and ideas cross-pollinate across time and topic. That’s the dream… not virality, but continuity. Not applause, but dialogue.
So take all the time you need, I’m thrilled this one will have a second (or third) life in your slower moments. And if November 2026 rolls around and you still feel compelled to write that comment? I promise I’ll still be here, smiling like someone who just received a handwritten letter tucked inside a book.
Gratefully,
Still not teaching a 6-week course on how to reclaim your privacy :)
You mentioned future archaeologists, I feel like a present day one sifting through this public yet incredibly mysterious, esoteric paradigm you are authoring here. I’m dusting for details within every nook of the architecture you have built in syntax and sentence. I’m becoming conversant in your public work (and your dialogue with myself and others).
This exploration is better than all the streaming services combined.
I’m smiling and nodding too.
You’ve just given me the highest imaginable compliment, not only have you made me feel less like I’m shouting into the void, but you’ve positioned this exchange as a kind of excavation site: layered, messy, half-buried truths waiting to be dusted off by someone attentive enough to linger.
I am moved by your choice of words: public yet mysterious, esoteric yet architectural. That’s the paradox I live in (and sometimes write from)… trying to make visible the contours of things that resist clarity. And to know you’re in that space too, trowel in hand, brushing dust from nuance… that’s the real joy.
So thank you, fellow archaeologist of the unspoken!
I would like a “nod” button. An engagement tool that just acknowledges with an unspoken valence.
in the absence of such a gesture, I’m smiling and nodding in an understated and joyous acknowledgment of being together, entangled in these ideas.
‘We don’t trust what isn’t legible anymore. We have conflated vulnerability with exposure and transparency with intimacy. But there is a vast difference between being known and being seen. One is slow, recursive, and earned; the other is rapid and ravenous, offering visibility as a poor substitute for understanding.’
‘And so the wild shrinks because we have stopped venturing into it, not because it has disappeared. We have chosen the garden instead: neatly pruned, algorithmically arranged, and always under surveillance.’
Astonishing. You have a gift. Both in the seeing. Then in the sculpting. And finally in the articulation. Don’t know how you do it. Nor from whence you come. All I know is that it’s quite astonishing.
What a beautiful kind of astonishment, the kind that doesn’t demand explanation, only acknowledgment. Thank you for this, Marcel! If there’s any gift here, I suspect it’s in the refusal to look away. From the absurd, the tender, the slippery contradictions we all quietly carry.
As for where I come from…. somewhere between literature and lived experience, and insomnia, reverence and rebellion. But mostly? From the same bewildering world we’re all trying to name without ruining.
Thank you, Marcel! Truly!
Breathtaking to discover you Tamara ♥️
Thank you Tamara, not only for your exquisite writing, also for this characteristically beautiful message.
The gift is certainly, although only partially, in the refusal to look away. From the absurd, the tender, the slippery contradictions.
Then, once the spotlight of your gaze has alighted, on whatever topic or piece catches your eye, that’s when the real magic starts.
It’s what happens then, how you engage, the superbly skilful dance that always unfolds, with the idea, the topic, the context, the foreground, the background, the writer, the reader, yourself.
Always searingly insightful, witty, sharp, captivating, layered, superbly constructed, with perfect expression, at dizzying speed. Flowing forth, effortlessly it seems.
Yet, impressive as that is, laced also with another element. Somehow, still always gentle, kind, considerate, respectful, never hurtful.
A supremely impressive extra layer to your dazzling skill. The exquisite gentleness you bring to every piece, paragraph, sentence or word.
Delicate spirit, fierce independence, sharp insight, mesmerising dances, with infinite skill, grace and nuance. It’s beautiful !
It’s humble to suggest it lies mainly in the refusal to look away. That is part of it. For sure. Truth be told however that’s just the beginning. A small part of it.
Your gift is way bigger than that. And every piece you pen a delectable treasure to all of us who read it. Thank you Tamara !
Your exchanges with Ian Nolan, AGK, Alexander TD are especially delicious treats. For all the above flowing wizardry. Just exceptional !
…. and I am blushing. Your words are like a tribute composed by candlelight (it’s past 1 a.m. here too) careful, considered, and with such warmth that I almost forgot I was being spoken about and not to in some secret corner of a Paris café.
I’m especially touched by what you name as gentleness, not because it’s effortless (it isn’t), but because it’s intentional. In a time where so much of our discourse feels like dueling declarations, I try to make space for contradiction without cruelty, for sharpness without severance. To wield language like a scalpel, yes, but one wrapped in silk.
Your comment itself is a kind of dance, not applause, but choreography. And if the essay is the music, then your reply is the part where I sit back in wonder at how beautifully others can move within it.
Thank you, Marcel, for staying up past one two nights in a row, but for bringing such reverence, intelligence, and joy to the table. I promise to try not to be your undoing… though I can’t entirely promise to make it easier to stop reading!
And blush you should ! The words were a spontaneous tribute composed by candlelight. Entirely unplanned and just carried along in the feeling. Didn’t realise it’s 1.00 am there too. Thought you were in New York. See it’s Paris. Thank you for your own kind words. You were being spoken not about and very much to. In some secret corner of a Paris Cafe. Unscripted, unavoidable.
And your gentleness is unmistakeable. Delighted it’s considered, conscious, intentional. As a counter to duelling declarations. Contradiction without cruelty. Sharpness without severance. Wield language. Scalpel wrapped in silk. Omg, you’re not from this planet, how do you do this, just masterful.
Stoked to be one of many, moving in mesmerised dance, through the exquisitely beautiful music, you so effortlessly craft.
Thank you Tamara, for these pieces that flow from your pen, the kind sentiments belong to you, so make that past one, not two but three nights in a row, I’m addicted and you certainly are my undoing !
If I was blushing before, I’m positively incandescent now. What a glorious cascade of warmth, wit, and literary affection! You say your words were spontaneous, but they land like something distilled over time, aged in oak, lit by candlelight, and served in the exact tone a writer dreams of being received in: with reverence, mischief, and a glint of delight.
And now I’m not just undone, I’m undone on multiple continents. From Paris to Cape Town. A secret café across oceans. Your daughter sounds like a force in her own right, and the thought of my words reaching her through yours… well, that’s the kind of generational magic that gives me hope for art, for language, for everything.
Thank you for letting the dance continue into a third night! May your winter days be full of sunlight and soul, and may we keep meeting like this, across paragraphs, unscripted and unavoidable.
Also, spent the day, a glorious winter Sunday in Cape Town, with my daughter, a gifted student artist, spirit and wordsmith. Showed her some of your pieces above, she was every bit as blown away as I. So now your continental fan base is growing !
It’s exactly 1.00 again ! And for the second night in a row I’ve spent way more time than I ever intended feasting on your superb pieces. At this rate you’re going to be the undoing of me. Time to turn in. Anon.
Oh Tamara!
I’ve not been here for long, but your prose is captivating. You have drawn me back to reading long-form, a 3-hour full-course dinner in a world where my daily sustenance is grabbing a few five-minute-snacks-on-the-go. And you have drawn me back to writing, clumsily attempting to copy your weaving word-smithery.
We all seem to struggle to keep ourselves centred, sane and separate in this “modern” world with so many disorienting and dissociating distractions.
I’ve never explored of the subject of privacy in such depth, guided by your scrumptious and heartfelt turns of phrase.
It’s truly a symphony of acute observations, crescendos of joy and pain, interlinked with words dancing off the screen to your unique musicality.
I’m an extrovert, but in the past few years I’ve become more introverted and private. Your essay has helped me to understand why.
I was going to conclude by saying I’d love to meet you one day, though maybe it’s better you remain hidden behind the veil of your word-music so you retain your much-valued privacy!
What a beautifully disarming message, I read it like a toast raised mid-feast, where the guests have finally slowed down enough to taste each word, each thought, each shared silence. I’m honoured to have played the role of literary sommelier, nudging you gently from snacks back to slow dinners, from swipe-speed to full attention.
The image of your extroversion slowly folding into a more private interior, and recognising it not as retreat but as evolution, feels so special. So many of us have been reshaped by this era without knowing how or why. If my words helped frame that quiet shift, then I’ve done something far more meaningful than merely writing.
And as for your “clumsy attempts” to write again… let me tell you, clumsiness is where the soul lives. Please keep writing! Not to mirror, but to answer. Not to replicate, but to resonate.
As for meeting one day… perhaps the veils are part of the dance. But should they ever lift, I have a feeling we’d recognise each other instantly by tone, by rhythm, by the way we guard joy like it’s something sacred.
Thank you, truly, for this wonderful reply!
P.S. by the way, I secretly dream to meet all my special readers one day, in a café where we could all have interminable conversations.
Tamara this really resonates. Back in 2018 it was early days in a new relationship with a much younger woman from the US. From the outset I was honest about my complete lack of interest in sharing any details of my life on social media.
My requests were no phones out while we were together, never any photos of me online without my permission (which would not be forthcoming), and above all, never, ever, photos of our food.
Things progressed and several years later we had our first child but had never met any of the US relatives because of Covid. We invited Nicole’s aunt and uncle to come sailing.
On the first evening, after a few wines I was taken to one side by the aunt who said “Paul, Cesare and I have talked and don’t worry - it’s OK with us if you can’t tell us what you do.” I smiled and thanked her, not wanting to lose the moment.
The moral of this tale is stay off social media, you’ll be happier and people will think you’re a spy. It’s a double whammy 😂
This is glorious, Paul, a parable for the postmodern age. Refuse the algorithm, and suddenly you’re either mysterious, suspicious, or clandestinely important. In this culture that equates visibility with virtue and documentation with proof-of-life, to abstain is to acquire a kind of mythos.
Your story is not just charming, it’s slyly profound. That gentle misreading by Nicole’s aunt, as if silence were concealment rather than discernment, perfectly captures our collective inability to process opacity anymore. If someone isn’t narrating their lunch, career, or midlife spiritual pivot in real time, we assume they’re either emotionally repressed or on the run from Interpol.
And your three rules — no phones, no photos, and absolutely no culinary documentation — should be etched in stone and placed at the entrance of every modern relationship. You were ahead of the curve, you were sailing clean past it, wind in your hair and dignity intact.
In short: you resisted the feed. You weaponised absence. Bravo!
"there is a vast difference in being shown snd being seen." You have perfectly defined the vast wasteland between being a hack actor and being an artist. I realize the prevailing opinion about theatre is that it is, by definition, "performative." But, paradoxically, any great performance is anything but "performative." A compelling portrayal demands an artist be so concentrated, so committed to character, that an intimacy is created. Not sensationalism. Not voyeurism. But true sacred communion between actor and audience. Not unlike when, because of deep love and respect, we feel it is safe to share something sacred with another. It is life affirming. It is Rarefied Air. Most of life is like the hack actor. A poseur. An indicator of caricatured faux emotion. A virtual personality. An A.I. imitation of real personhood. The profound difference between showing a well crafted veneer and the unaffected, unpretentious state of being seen. A kind of existential nudity.
This is an exquisite riff, a hit of elegy, a bit of manifesto, and it left me nodding with that rare kind of recognition usually reserved for late-night conversations with someone who gets it down to the bone.
You’ve captured the paradox of performance with devastating clarity: that the best acting, the most soul-piercing, truth-bearing kind, isn’t performative at all. It’s presence distilled. Not projection, but embodiment. Not noise, but signal. And yes, it is sacred communion—between actor and audience, but also between selves: the self that dares to reveal and the self that dares to witness without flinching.
Theatre at its best, like intimacy at its best, is not spectacle… it’s risk! Vulnerability without varnish. Existential nudity, as you so perfectly put it. Which is why, I think, so much of what we call “sharing” today feels off. It skips the risk, the reverence, the ache. It mistakes exposure for truth. And like you said, most of life becomes the hack actor: gesturing wildly, mouthing borrowed lines, waiting for applause that never quite satisfies.
Thank you for this extraordinary reply, Jeff!
" Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things."
- Kahlil Gibran
“… sometimes, I don't even take the photo… beautiful things don't ask for attention….”
- The secret life of Walter Mitty
“Would you still want to travel to that country if you could not take a camera with you?”
- Nayyirah Waheed
Forgive me, I don't even want to comment, but this piece has been my quiet whisper, the ode I write to myself since I could remember.
Maybe that's it, all of this is a purposeful agenda to create amnesiacs out of us all.
Thank you for the reminders.
No forgiveness needed, your non-comment is, in fact, poetry. A silent chorus of those who still believe in the sanctity of the unrecorded. It’s ritual. A liturgy of restraint in a world screaming for spectacle.
Those quotes you wove in? They read like incantations for the soul’s protection. Gibran’s warning, Mitty’s reverence, Waheed’s challenge… they each hold a mirror up to our current moment and ask, softly but insistently: can you live without the lens? Can you inhabit something fully without outsourcing its meaning?
And yes, maybe it is a kind of orchestrated forgetting. A cultural conditioning that teaches us to perform life, and to doubt its existence unless it’s framed and fed back to us. Against that tide, your whisper is powerful. Sacred, even.
So thank you for reminding me that some readers don’t need to respond loudly to be deeply, profoundly present.
so good . thank you
Thank you, Sarah!
Oh boy, so beautiful. Your article is a stunningly crafted meditation on the hollowness of social media’s performative culture. I walked away from it three years ago, and though I sometimes ache for the connection it promised, your words pinpoint why I left. The way everything about a person is now an open book—searchable, packaged, and polished—strips away any sense of privacy or unshared moments. It’s all about chasing likes and validation, isn’t it? Reading this, I’m reminded of how much I miss the enigma of people, that subtle allure of not knowing everything upfront.
Now, we’re all reduced to curated profiles, our quirks and scars laid out like a digital resume, leaving no shadow for imagination or discovery. Your piece captures that loss so vividly, making me nostalgic for when the unknown was a gift, not a void to be filled with oversharing. Thank you for this evocative reflection.
Saving it to read again and again sometime later.
What an exquisitely felt reply, thank you for taking the time to write something that is not limited to praise, but a reflection, a reckoning, and a remembrance all at once. You’ve distilled the ache of this moment so precisely: “the enigma of people”, yes, that! That shimmer of not-knowing, the slow unfolding of a person over time, once considered the thrill of intimacy, now treated as a UX flaw.
Your line about quirks and scars laid out like a digital résumé is devastatingly accurate. We’ve turned ourselves into scrollable cover letters, perfected for attention but starved of mystery. And that shadow, the one we used to peer into with curiosity, is now floodlit, flattened, turned into content.
I completely understand that lingering ache for the connection social media once promised. That’s the cruelest part, isn’t it? It did offer something at first, glimpses of community, of presence. But what we got instead was a mirror maze. Reflections, but not touch.
Thank you for your generosity, for rereading, and most of all, for choosing to preserve the unknown. It is a gift, and your words are a reminder of how precious, and rare, it’s become.
My God, your essay is formidable and the topic deserves its own book if we were to imagine a world where this level of insight weaved inside pure poetry could be maintained for a couple hundred pages. I'm sure you'd manage it, but you have enough on your plate for now — thank you for spoiling us big-time, with all things considered!
What a generous vision, Sebastian, a world where insight and poetry are allowed to hold hands for a few hundred pages without being interrupted by algorithms or reduced to bullet points. If such a world exists, I’d love to live (and write) in it….
Your words feel like an exhale after effort, a reminder that long-form still has a pulse, and that readers like you are the ones keeping it alive, savouring, not skimming. That’s the kind of “spoiling” I could only hope for, not quantity, but depth. Not noise, but resonance.
Thank you for seeing the labour and the lyricism! I’ll keep the book idea tucked in my coat pocket… along with your encouragement!
Whilst tempted to write an essay to respond to each of your points, to meet their complexity, I shall not. Sunday afternoons are as evanescent here in Australia as in Paris.
I feel that we live in, even trapped in, a cult of communication, which renders us, ironically, largely lacking chance physical interaction. Whether in the street, in shops, waiting for or travelling on public transport, too many are buried in their devices.
So we try, perhaps instinctively, to live lives of ‘normal’ personal interaction, to vicariously compensate for that traditional social interactions now lost.
For example, when I first left home to study or work interstate or overseas, I’d correspond regularly with family & friends, especially my mother, with letters. Thankfully I still have most of them: what a fascinating history they tell. Telephone calls then were expensive, & there was no email.
What we write online perpetuates that wonderful tradition, but with one critical difference: our written letters, replete with cutting of everything from newspaper articles, the titles of books, recipes & photos, were PRIVATE.
Bringing our lives to the stage is not. This magnifies & accelerates the acuity of Shakespeare’s observation: “Life is but a poor player…. who struts & frets his hour upon the stage…. & then is heard no more”.
This is exquisite, both in sentiment and in restraint. You’ve articulated, with the elegance of someone who has lived both sides of the divide, the strange ache of our time, that in trying to communicate constantly, we’ve all but forgotten how to connect meaningfully.
Your “a cult of communication” lingers like a diagnosis. Because yes, we’ve mistaken frequency for intimacy, expression for presence. And now we broadcast endlessly in pursuit of what used to be found in a pause, a glance, or the ink of a letter folded into thirds.
Those private correspondences you mention, annotated with clippings, dog-eared book titles, perhaps the faint scent of the sender’s room, held a texture that digital life erases. Not just a history, but a hush. A kind of temporal layering that allowed thought to steep rather than stream. To write then was to wait for the words to settle, and for the reply to arrive. That slowness was part of the meaning.
And how perfectly you invoked Shakespeare, because we are all onstage now, endlessly performing versions of ourselves for invisible audiences. We’ve lost privacy and dignity of ephemerality. The freedom to vanish between acts.
Thank you for this, Russell! It reads like a handwritten letter slipped under the curtain. I’ll treasure it accordingly.
Thanks Tamara, I’ll treasure your reply. I did try to hand-write a response, but, ironically, technology does not allow it here.
Sadly, you can attach photos only in Notes. But thank you anyway!
I was one of those quiet readers for a while now, Tamara, but your writing deserves a loud clap to say the least!
I found myself nodding along and laughing out loud. And besides excellent writing, I really appreciate the Lee Miller photos you've included!!
What a joy to hear from you especially when the clap is this resounding and warm. Thank you, Suzy! I treasure the silent nods, but when they turn into laughter and applause, it feels like the writing has leapt off the page and landed somewhere it truly matters.
Lee Miller’s work has always haunted me in the best way: beauty sharpened by history, elegance laced with subversion. She knew how to hold mystery and clarity in the same frame, exactly the kind of visual counterpart I hoped would echo my essay’s spirit.
I’m so glad the words and the images found you. And I’m even gladder you decided to speak. My readers’ voices are a precious gift.