Financially feral.

Like every other perfectly average thirty-something woman in Los Angeles, I was in a group chat named "Hot Girls With Anxiety," narrating my day to other women doing the same thing. Boyfriend problems, bad matchas, thrifted cowboy boots, UTIs. True journalism stuff, really.

As we were getting ready to grace the bar with our presence, one of my friends asked something that quietly exposed herself.

She asked, "What is my brand?"

I replied, "Brand of what?"

She answered as if I was the stupid one. "Ya know, my BRAND."

I still didn't know what she meant. "Brand of what?!"

"My brand. My aesthetic."

And that's when I realized we weren't getting ready to go out. We were staging the soft launch of our summer identities, LLC.

Blue bubbles started popping up one after the other.

"You're like… whimsical goth but approachable."

"No, she's studious 'I'm smarter than you' post-grad vibes."

"Okay, but also, 'I have good taste in books and jackets.'"

The blue bubbles kept popping up, and with each one, the group chat started to reek of curated nonsense and performative enthusiasm. It wasn't about finding the vibe. It was about confirming she had one. 

After about the fourth tagline was sent, it stopped feeling like a group chat and started feeling like a pitch meeting for a rebrand no one asked for. She was the CEO of Vibes Inc., and we were the underpaid marketing interns tossing out phrases like "ethereal librarian chic" and "depressed coquette with a skincare routine," hoping something would stick before we started getting ready to go out. 

As if being a person wasn't hard enough, we, as a society, went ahead and turned it into a business. Social media used to be about staying in touch. But now it feels more like we're all running personal PR campaigns. We spend our days gathering a nation of meaningful things that we hope represent who we are. People don't just “post" anymore. No. They build brand loyalty. And I, for my life, didn't understand who my friend was building this loyalty for, considering the fact that, for the past three years, we've only spoken to the same six people. 

I didn’t mean to get annoyed, but I did. I couldn’t help it. It felt a little insulting. That she was outsourcing something as personal as identity to us. Maybe she just wanted reassurance. Maybe we all do. But how many versions of herself did she need us to come up with before one finally made her feel real?

I finally replied, “Effortless, but in a way that takes a near-militarized level of planning…. And always asking for my cigarettes.”

It’s contagious to be around someone who is always hyper-curating their life. Suddenly you’re wondering if your digital footprint gives “mysterious but approachable” or just “chronically online.” It starts to seep into friendships too. Suddenly, it’s not just about catching up. It’s about being seen catching up.We used to have memories. Now we have content strategies. And maybe that’s why my friend’s question hit me so hard. “What’s my brand?” It wasn’t insecurity. It was a business empire in the making one that felt every bit as capitalistic as the girl who’d spent the last seven years lecturing me on Marxism.

I felt completely duped. All the personality I thought was real, all her talk about authenticity, was just another trend she was trying on. Now she was widening her audience, but nothing was real. She was, in fact, the very capitalist she claimed to despise. In her effort to expand, she lost the very loyal customers who once believed in her.

A few more messages flew back and forth. Half compliments, half identity crisis until I finally said, “I’m the wrong person to ask. I literally can’t buy a pack of cigarets and three cups of coffee on the same week without my account going negative. You’re the one with master’s degree and a Roth IRA and you’re out here acting like you’re in a crisis. Like, bitch.” It wasn’t meant to be dramatic, just honest.

She replied, “It’s giving jealous victimindset that financially feral.”

The other girls couldn’t heart her reply fast enough, following with “LMFAO” and “Read to filth.” After the group chat identity crisis, I didn’t go out that night. I stayed home and fell into a rabbit hole of niche influencers who all seemed to be offering MasterClass-level insights on things they definitely were not qualified to teach. Financial literacy from a girl named Lexx with a neon green Stanley cup and an astrology side hustle. Relationship advice from a guy who did Ayahuasca on a boys trip and came back fluent in empathy. And endless tutorials on how to “become that girl,” which mostly just involved journaling, and pretending your anxiety was just a charming little hobby.

It made me think maybe my friend wasn’t confused. Maybe she was just studying.

Because now, education isn’t something you get from a classroom or a credential. It’s something you absorb through your feed. A passive osmosis of hot takes, carousel posts, and thirty-second explainers on things like attachment theory, and how to “quiet quit” a job you already hate. Information is everywhere. A girl with good lighting and a mic taped to her tank top can teach you how to do your taxes, unpack generational trauma, and start a side hustle. All before your morning coffee.

We used to ask our friends for advice. Now we forward Reels from strangers who seem like they have it more together. In a weird way, social media has turned us all into students and teachers at once. There’s this democratization of knowledge that feels hopeful like maybe we can all learn something from each other. But there’s also this creeping feeling that none of it’s vetted, that we’re just reblogging ideas the way we used to reblog Tumblr quotes in 2012. If it sounds good, feels smart, and fits the aesthetic?

I keep thinking about how my friend asked us to define her. And how social media lets us all do that not just define ourselves, but learn how to define ourselves through curated information. Every post is a flashcard for some pop-psychology term or aesthetic. The internet is basically one giant personality quiz, and we are all desperately trying to get the result that will finally make our lives make sense. Or at least make good content.

The worst part is, it works. Networking through social media? Incredible. You can find your people, your niche, your weird little micro-community of people who also want to discuss niche 1970s cinema and conspiracy theories. There’s something really beautiful about that. And if you’re a self-starter? You can teach yourself literally anything. Graphic design. Freelance contract law. How to identify manipulative behaviors in group chats that masquerade as community but are actually late-stage capitalism.

But if you're not careful, you start confusing learning with scrolling. You start to believe that information = wisdom. And that vibes = values. And suddenly you're a walking, talking, algorithm-informed echo of the last five things you saved to your Instagram collections.

We don’t just look things up anymore we become them.

So yeah. Social media can democratize education. It can offer access where none existed. It can make experts out of amateurs and communities out of chaos. But it can also turn your friend group into a self-help podcast with no qualifications and too many opinions. It can make you feel like learning is just one more aesthetic to master. One more layer of your personal brand.

And maybe that’s what still haunts me about that night. Not that my friend didn’t know who she was. But that she thought she had to know in a way that could be branded, marketed, and monetized. That self-knowledge is something to post. That wisdom is only real if it fits in a caption.

We used to just be girls. Now we’re influencers of each other’s lives, carefully curating our growth for maximum engagement.