In the book 1984, Orwell imagined dafo dystopia run by an omnipresent government figure, Big Brother, watching citizens from above, instilling fear and obedience through state surveillance. But we didn’t need a totalitarian regime to reach that world. We built it ourselves, only now, there’s no single Big Brother, there are millions.
We used to fear being watched. Now, we do the watching, and worse, we invite it.
This isn’t some niche internet phenomenon. It’s a cultural shift that touches everything from the pressure to maintain a perfectly curated life on Instagram, to the way TikTok trends make consumption feel like a moral imperative, to the collective pile-on when someone, anyone, slips. We don’t need a Big Brother. We’ve created a million little Brothers — friends, followers, fans, strangers — who are always watching. Zoom calls, Instagram stories, comment sections, Twitter threads dissecting a stranger’s parenting or body or breakup. Everyone’s a brand, and everyone’s a watchdog. We don’t need an official figure telling us how to behave; we’ve absorbed the role of enforcer into our own social habits.
Social media didn’t invent this, but it supercharged it. We’ve built a system where we are constantly watching, judging, and curating not only our lives but everyone else’s too. The line between performance and authenticity isn’t just blurred, it’s been erased and redrawn as a leader board.
On platforms like TikTok and Instagram, it’s no longer about sharing, it’s about staging. You don’t just have a morning routine, you film it. You don’t just go to the gym, you showcase the outfit, the water bottle, and the skincare you use after. Content creation has become both performance and proof. Take the Tiktok trend of “hot girl/cool girl must-haves” videos. On the surface, it’s playful, even helpful. But underneath is a coded system of rules: if you want to be seen a certain way, you better own the right things, say the right things, and look the right way. We attach social currency; we’re applying dress codes to access ‘hot girl’ status.
This focus on aesthetics as identity and products as values isn’t just harmless fun but also deeply problematic. When we equate who we are with what we have, how we look, and how we perform for an audience, we begin to shape our sense of self around external validation. We become the sum of our curated performances, losing sight of the complexities of our real identities. This isn’t just about consumerism or beauty standards, it’s about a culture that values image over authenticity, spectacle over substance.
The problem with living in a world where identity is commodified is that it creates anxiety, inadequacy, and a constant fear of judgment. We’re not just living for ourselves anymore but we’re living for an unseen audience that constantly grades us. This dynamic pushes us to keep up with a version of success that’s unsustainable. When social currency becomes the measure of our value, we lose the parts that make us truly human. In the end, this culture doesn’t just make us anxious; it makes us disconnected. It’s difficult to build real relationships, to find real joy, or to feel truly seen when we’re too busy worrying about what everyone else sees. The obsession with being perfect, through the lens of things like ‘hot girl’ aesthetics and other stupid, viral trends, reduces us all to one-dimensional performers. As we try to live up to those ideals, we become less and less real, both online and in our own lives.
At the end of the day, this system is messy because it’s decentralized. There is no one person to hold responsible when things go too far. There is no central source of authority. That makes the pressure harder to resist, because it’s coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
None of this is organized, but all of it is enforced. For example, the viral TikTok trend of “cool girl summer essentials”. These aren’t just innocent, fun recommendations — these are micro-dress codes enforced by thousands of influencers and everyday users alike. If you don’t own the right swimsuit, the right self-tanner, or the right body shape to pull it off, you’re out of the running. We see this mirrored in the cancel culture movement, where one misstep, one wrong opinion, a joke taken out of context, or a single mistake, can spiral into a public shaming campaign. We don’t need Big Brother to monitor our every move, we’ve created a hyper-engaged community of vigilantes who impose norms not through laws or formal rules, but through social currency. Judgment = engagement. Engagement = reach. Reach = relevance. In this world, everyone becomes both the watched and the watcher.
So, we adjust. We edit. We stage. We overthink. We begin to pre-empt the judgment. We cut off the criticism before it happens. Eventually, we don’t even need anyone else to do the watching, we’re already doing it to ourselves. Shame is a powerful tool. It keeps people in line. But it also makes everything feel like a performance. You can’t just be. You must be on. And when we get tired of being policed, we turn around and do the same to someone else.
Because if I’m being watched, you should be too.
