The Hamster Wheel of Being Online

In the race to create an edgy online personal brand, have the freshest take on the block, and build a relationship with an invisible audience, we're missing one thing. The joke is on us.

Apr 06, 2024

[Sudhir Patwardhan, ‘Studio Phantoms,’ (2021)]

The first line of an obituary is a tricky thing. Especially when someone has died young, unexpectedly, or both. For the fortunately alive, it’s also a check-in. “What is it that I’m doing in the now that might sneak its way into the first line?” Or, like in my case when I was reading the obituary of someone I knew in the way you know people online, the question was the other side to the existential coin — “What is it that I’m doing now that will never be remembered?” The answers came fast. List of viral tweets. Followers on Instagram. List of people who think I am cool.

Internet culture is not built for longevity. Instead, it thrives on the ephemeral. The here and now. If newspapers famously have a shelf-life of a day, hot takes become stale-cold in a few hours. People become Internet celebrities quickly, but fade faster than you can say “burnout.” It’s why there’s an inherent restlessness to being online. You always feel you’re not doing enough. But the question is, even with what we are doing, how much of it is real?

The answer to that question depends on your earliest relationship with the Internet. When the Internet was first introduced to my home, it was a shiny new plaything. Getting online was a task. You had to plan when you will go online, and for how long. You had to wait for the dial-up to work. And only then, the world was yours…to an extent. I remember going online to chat with school friends who I had just met a few hours before, find photos of Harry Potter film sets, and create my own Lizzie McGuire wardrobe. Then, you had to hit “disconnect” and go offline.

The online was an extension of the offline; something that grew from the world we lived, and the people we were. With the Internet becoming more and more omnipresent, things changed. As I write this, I have friendships that began online, a career that’s largely in the digital world, and of course, an audience that reads this newsletter however sporadic it is, on the Internet. Which is why, this is not an essay advocating for a Before Times. But to question the framework in which we are now think of the concept of “what’s real?”

Imagine an arrow between our online selves and us. If, in this relationship, the force exerted by us is still the one that’s stronger, then why are we exhausting ourselves trying to prove otherwise?

I dislike the term “personal brand.” Branding is done for things that are unchanging. You take an object like a bar of soap. Zero down on adjectives that define the bar of soap. Create a brand around it. Fragrant, will clean, lasts long.

But human beings are not objects. I had to get a new phone recently, and and in the process of installing apps, I somehow managed to log in to an old Instagram account. The whiplash was immediate. I scrolled through my old posts and felt a surge of affection and alienation for the young woman beaming back at me. If you asked me to describe myself using three adjectives in 2016, and compare them with three adjectives in 2024, they won’t be the same. And thank god for that.

Humans are meant to evolve. Creating a personal brand that pins you to the person you are in a moment in time makes the evolution more painful than it is. Especially, if creating that online brand has led you to have an audience that loves you. If the whole business of living is disappointing people, it is much easier to disappoint a few rather than a couple of hundred thousand. And infinitely easier to do so in private than finding yourself publicly being called “irrelevant.”

What a personal brand also does, is it binds you to fame. Or a version of it. The dictionary defines fame as the state of being known for having or doing something important. But if the thing that’s important — the thing that makes people recognise you or DM you or increases your followers — is you, then you go from being a human being to the CEO of the company called “You.” It’s quite possible and maybe even expected to tell yourself once in a while, “Dost, we need to stop doing this because it’s not helping us. But try saying that to “You,” the brand, with the added pressure of a hundred thousand folks waiting to take away their precious attention if they notice you doing something that’s not “on-brand.” You won’t be able to.

In 2014, Dutch neurophysiologists found that if you place a hamster wheel outdoors, then wild animals will come and run on it. Over three years, they recorded more than 200,000 animals who used the wheels. Wild mice, frogs, rats, even slugs — all used the hamster wheel in their own way. The scientists said that this suggests that the wheel might be a “rewarding activity.” The hamster wheel is fun.

The dictionary begs to differ. Used as a metaphor, the hamster wheel means, being busy all the time but never achieving something important. The hamster wheel, here, is pointless. So, who to believe? The scientists or the dictionary?

The answer is, beech mein.

However loud the chorus of digital detox may get, the truth is the Internet is not going anywhere. The great promise of social media being a way to express ourselves still stands. Except now, we’re interrupted by the eerie feeling that maybe it’s social media that’s instead expressing us into being. To enjoy the hamster wheel of being online then, means to be aware of the pull that the Internet exerts on us. To acknowledge that we love the exercise, the rewards, the sheer joy of being online — writing, learning new things, expressing ourselves, making friends, creating and dismantling worlds. But also then, to have the foresight to see the endless continuity of being online for what it is.

It’s a wheel running on it’s own. Get off and sit down. The world is round.

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