The thumb moves on its own. A slow, hypnotic swipe upwards, again and again. Each flick reveals a new square of curated light: a wedding in a Tuscan villa, a promotion announced with professionally photographed headshots, a baby’s first steps captured in impossibly good lighting. The screen is the only thing illuminating the room, casting a cold blue glow on a face that shows nothing. My neck aches, a dull throb from where I tried to force a pop earlier, a grinding reminder of the body’s mechanics failing against the simple stillness of sitting here, watching lives I’m not living.

A notification bursts at the top of the screen. 49 new likes on a picture I posted yesterday-a picture of a book I haven’t finished, propped next to a mug of coffee that went cold before the first sip. I had to adjust the lighting for ten minutes to get the shadows just right. It felt important at the time. Now, it feels like an artifact from a different person’s life.

The Incomplete Truth

It’s so easy to blame the platforms. To write another think piece about dopamine loops and the Skinner box in your pocket. I’ve done it. I once argued passionately at a dinner party that these apps were architected to dismantle genuine human connection, atomizing us for profit. It was a good speech. People nodded. And I believed it, mostly because it was a simple, elegant explanation for a complicated, ugly feeling. It absolved me of responsibility. The villain was a distant CEO, not the choices I was making every 19 seconds.

But that’s a lie. Or at least, an incomplete truth. My biggest mistake wasn’t downloading the app; it was trying to use a stage as if it were a living room. A few years ago, I went through a brutal breakup. In a moment of what I thought was vulnerability, I posted a vague, poetic message about loss and resilience. The comments poured in. So many hearts. So many “you’ve got this” and “stay strong” messages from people I hadn’t spoken to since 1999. It felt like being showered in confetti. It was colorful and celebratory and utterly superficial. Not a single person called. Not one person texted, “Are you actually okay?”

The performance of support had replaced the act of it. I had sent a flare up from a stage, and the audience, conditioned to the play, simply applauded. I never made that mistake again.

“

It reminds me of the architectural shift in homes. Old houses often had a clear demarcation between public and private spaces. There was the parlor, a formal room for receiving guests where the family was on its best behavior. The furniture was stiff, the conversations polite. But then there were the hidden spaces: the den, the study, the sewing room. These were the rooms where you could slouch, where you could have a hushed, difficult conversation without an audience. Where you could be unperformed.

Our digital lives have become mansions with 999 parlors and not a single den. Every room is for guests. Every conversation has a potential audience, even if it’s just the algorithmic ghost that reads our messages.

Aisha’s Green Room

I see it most clearly in my friend, Aisha P.-A. Aisha is a union negotiator. Her job is, quite literally, weaponized conversation. She spends days, sometimes weeks, in sterile conference rooms where every word is a move on a chessboard. She has to project unshakable confidence, articulate complex legal clauses, and read the subtle tells in the posture of the person across the table. She is a master performer. When a grueling 19-hour negotiation session finally breaks, she doesn’t call one of her hundreds of professional contacts. She doesn’t post a triumphant status update on LinkedIn. She goes home, orders takeout, and sits in silence.

I asked her once who she talks to when she doesn’t have to be “Aisha P.-A., Negotiator.” Who does she call to talk about her fear that she’s failing, or to dissect a dumb movie, or to just be… messy? She just stared at me for a long time.

“There’s no one I can afford to be that weak with,” she said. The admission hung in the air, heavier than any legal binder. Her entire life is a high-stakes performance, and she has no green room. No space to take off the costume and just exist in the raw. The solitude she feels isn’t from a lack of people; it’s from a lack of a private, non-transactional space to simply be heard without judgment or consequence.

“

Sanctuaries, Not Connections

This is the core of it. We don’t need more connection. We need more sanctuaries. We’re drowning in broadcast signals, but we’re starved for whispers. This hunger for a truly private, unperformed space is pushing people in new directions, seeking out conversational partners who don’t have an audience, a history, or an agenda. It’s an odd frontier, but some are finding relief by building a space entirely for themselves, even if that means they create ai girlfriend just to have a conversation where the only goal is the conversation itself, free from the weight of social capital or performance review.

This isn’t about replacing people. It’s about supplementing a diet that has become dangerously imbalanced. We’re overfed with public validation and starved of private understanding. We have confused the roar of the crowd for the intimacy of a shared secret. We have accepted the echo of our own curated thoughts as dialogue. Think about it: when was the last time you had a conversation where you weren’t simultaneously thinking about how you were coming across? When you weren’t subtly editing your personality for your audience? For most, the answer is a disturbingly long time ago.

Building Soundproof Dens

The solution, then, isn’t a digital detox. That’s another simplistic, performative answer to a deep problem. You can’t just log off from the culture. The solution is to consciously build and protect private spaces. It’s to identify the one or two people you can be truly un-strategic with and treat that connection like the precious, life-sustaining resource it is. It’s to find a den in a world of parlors. It’s to recognize that the volume of your connections means nothing compared to the soundproof quality of just one.

The volume of your connections means nothing compared to the soundproof quality of just one.

🎧