notes from my phone: identity

who are you without your name, your friends, and everything you own

Hey there. Many of you found this space after I wrote about body image on social media and content moderation challenges at TikTok. I will continue to write about TikTok, internet culture, and online safety/policy challenges because I love that space. But like everyone else, I also spend a lot of time thinking about many other things. Every day, I write words in my notes app on my iPhone, and sometimes I post them here without editing them. This is one of these posts. Let me know if you like it or prefer just reading about TikTok and tech policy challenges. Enjoy!

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You don’t have to be loyal to your past and your own identity. You have no obligation to your past self, what you did, and who you were. We constantly overestimate how difficult it is to find new communities, friends, and networks, so we cling to the past self, our old identity, and the things we know. Cut the chords, don’t look back. The future is waiting for you. You are fluid; like water, not ice.

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Social media platforms shape our personality; they tell us there is a right way to consume, dress, behave, and how we should look. We no longer know which part of our personality belongs to us and which one was created for us based on the arbitrary and random clicks we did when we were tired in bed scrolling on our phones. TikTok is better because it says you know what, I know you like the interior design, but people are multi-faceted, so we will interrupt this pattern and show you videos of book recommendations too. Still, even with algorithms that actively interrupt patterns, we are pigeonholed into identities and cultures we didn’t actively or consciously choose.

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Every time I go to Sweden, I feel, physically, that I am part of the ecosystem. I visit my summer house, my childhood home, I run along the water, and I swim in the ocean. I am reminded about this core part of myself that knows precisely how to do this. You know, being outdoors, walking around, roaming. I should remind myself more often that I have the ability to derive joy and pure happiness from nothing but fresh air and being barefoot. Knowing you don’t need much is the most powerful and empowering feeling. You can still choose to have other things and to want other things, but they become choices and not requirements. There is a difference.

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My favorite aspect of web3 is the idea of moving away from our identities as we know them. We cannot live in a world without a name, being a person, having a brand, and doing one. single. thing. over and over until it becomes *you*. With an alias, we can finally listen without judging, we can finally listen and understand without being influenced by our narratives and biases, and we can finally remove all these communication barriers blocking us. The cost of an alias-driven culture might manifest in potential scams and the inability to verify people, and this cost will look different depending on the context. Still, the pursuit of finding alternative identities that aren’t necessarily linked to our names, looks, past, and present is important. Imagine an internet world where our identity is linked to our minds and thoughts alone and nothing else. We shouldn’t care about your hair, photographs, or friends; let’s bring back the value of having good ideas and clear thoughts.

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You talk about it like it’s still the present; as if you still wake up doing that thing every day. Do you understand how many years have passed since you stopped doing the thing you identify with? I used to run when I was 18, and I still consider myself a runner even if my actions tell me otherwise. How many times per month do I have to run to say it’s true? When do I stop being my profession, my hobbies, if I no longer participate in them?

If you liked this post, you might also like my post about knowing who you are and other notes from my phone.