The Online Version of Me That Became a Trap

I started a personal brand account in Auckland at 23 because it was the thing to do in the design community I was entering, and because I was genuinely excited about the work I was making and wanted to share it.

The early phase was honest - imperfect work, real process, occasional failures alongside the things I was proud of. Somewhere in the second year, as the account grew and the response to certain types of content became clearly stronger than others, I started editing in the direction of the response. The successes got posted.

The struggles got filtered. The personal content that showed a curated version of a life that was coherent and intentional performed better than the honest version and I drifted toward it without making any single deliberate decision to do so.

By 25 I had an audience of about forty thousand people who knew a version of me that was meaningfully different from the actual one. The account showed a person with a clear aesthetic, a deliberate life, confident opinions, and a consistent point of view.

The actual person was uncertain about most things, lived in a flat that did not match the backdrop I used for photos, and was navigating the ordinary confusion of being in their mid-twenties with no particular grace. The gap between the two versions was not a comfortable one to occupy.

I was aware of it constantly - when I posted something that was performing well, I felt a compound emotion that was part satisfaction and part something closer to imposter syndrome. The audience was responding to someone I was performing rather than someone I was.

Real connection, of the kind that the platform made me feel was available, was not possible with people who did not know what was true. The change came slowly. I started posting things that were more honest, then more honest again, testing whether the audience would stay. Some left.

Others responded with a warmth that was qualitatively different from the engagement the curated version had generated - more personal, more genuine, more like the connection I had originally been looking for. I have a much smaller and much more real relationship with the platform now. The account no longer runs ahead of me.

I would rather be followed by people who know something true about me than admired by people who know someone I invented.