I’m sad that this article is a members only Medium article, but I guess people need to monetize somehow if they’re going to write full time.
We curate ourselves into something safe. We smooth out our rough edges. We keep things palatable, we stay detached, we’re less invested, we’re dedicated to avoiding embarrassment at all costs.
That’s the mantra.
Be cool. Be aloof. Don’t try too hard. Don’t try at all.
To hell with that. To hell with all of it.
Being cool is a defense mechanism. It’s avoiding putting yourself out there. Avoid caring about anything and no one can make fun of you.
Putting your heart into anything—your work, your politics, your activism, your art, your writing, your life—makes you vulnerable to the smug assholes in the back row who’ve never risked a goddamn thing.
We don’t need more detached, ironic spectators. We need people who actually give a shit.
The powerful benefit from your aversion to the cringe. They feed on your silence. Every time you bite your tongue, every time you shrink back, every time you let the fear of embarrassment hold you hostage—they win.
That’s why they spend billions propping up social platforms that homogenize pop culture into something safe, predictable, and unthreatening. They don’t want art that disrupts, movements that grow, ideas that catch fire. They want content. They want trend cycles that move so fast no one can focus long enough to demand anything real. They want a world where “going viral” is the highest achievement, and where nobody has the guts to risk getting dragged in the comments.
I feel like I could quote this whole article. But this is the gist. Putting yourself out there is the only way to challenge the status quo.