By Bridget Maguire
The algorithm has declared me a shoegaze whimsy granola girl. On a good day, I’m giving clean-girl aesthetic. I don’t think I’m giving mob wife, and I’m definitely not serving tradwife.
I scroll, and there I am: a girl wearing my outfit, using my caption, listening to my song. Maybe she is me, or maybe she’s you. She could be anyone, just another girl who is “authentically herself.” But what does that even mean anymore? At some point, these labels became less like communities and more like categories of consumption. You can’t wear that Nirvana shirt unless you name five songs; if you’re a real Swiftie, you’ll buy the new album in all five colours.
The algorithm tells you how to dress, speak, behave, and even how to spend your Sunday mornings. Are you a Pilates Princess or a Party Girl? Suddenly, personality feels like a playlist being constantly edited: adding tracks for engagement, quietly deleting the ones that underperform. Even one of my tattoos has been pinned on Pinterest thousands of times.
The algorithm didn’t just observe me – it digested me, chewed up the contradictions that made me human, and spat out a neatly categorised digital self. And maybe the scariest part is that I let it.
The Asch Experiment Goes Viral
In 1951, Psychologist Solomon Asch asked participants to judge the lengths of simple lines on a card. It should’ve been easy. But surrounded by actors insisting on the wrong answer, real participants conformed. They ignored what they saw to fit what they felt was expected.
We’d rather be wrong together than right alone.
Today, the experiment isn’t confined to a lab. It’s happening across millions of feeds. The group is no longer seven strangers, it’s seven billion. The lines are drawn by algorithms determining what’s beautiful, acceptable, and worthy of attention. Trending sounds, trending outfits, trending outrage. Spotify hands us “personalised” mixes; TikTok serves “original” aesthetics; strangers decide which hobbies are cool this week.
Help! Everyone is conforming all around me, and I’m hungry for approval, inclusion, reassurance that I’ve picked the right line. Online popularity isn’t authenticity; it’s sharpening your edges to fit neatly into a label. But in that sharpening, we lose the bumpy, offline bits that make us human.
Subculture Is Dead. And I Have Killed Him.
Capitalism loves difference, but only when it’s profitable.
Once, subcultures were resistance. Punks opposed establishment norms; goths turned horror into glamour; ravers escaped the nine-to-five. They stood for something, even if that something was simply “not you.”
Now? Subcultures have been reduced to colour palettes and hashtags. Punk is sewn in sweatshops. Goth is an affiliate-linked Pinterest board. Rumour has it you can buy rebellion on Temu with next-day delivery.
Feminism flattened too. What began as radical political struggle now gets diluted into #girlboss office aesthetics and tote bags reading “The Future Is Female,” mass-produced by underpaid workers. Dick Hebdige once wrote that style was symbolic resistance; now the symbols are owned.
In the age of microtrends, cool mutates weekly. One minute it’s coquette; then blokette; then F1 girls; then rugby; suddenly you’re a pick-me for liking sports. The algorithm chewed up originality, flattened it into marketable aesthetics, and spat it back out for profit.
Authenticity: The Impossible Ideal
I’m full from these microtrends. Now I want to be authentic. But in a feedback-driven world, authenticity becomes performance. Baudrillard said we’re surrounded by simulacra, copies without originals. Scroll long enough and you’ll see it: lives curated to look uncurated, authenticity rehearsed under soft ring lights.
Humans have always copied. We learn language through imitation, belonging through mirroring. Authenticity has never been the absence of influence, it’s the awareness of it. Once, imitation was connection; now it’s a filter for belonging. The internet turned individuality into exclusion. “You’re not a real fan.” “You’re not doing that aesthetic right.”
The problem isn’t performance itself; it’s mistaking the performance for authenticity.
The Algorithm as Superego
The algorithm doesn’t just watch, it shapes. It monetises behaviour. We’re constantly fed stimulation but starved of satisfaction. Trend cycles keep us consuming, not creating. One week, you need a bow; the next, a Stanley Cup; the next, those things are “basic.”
Social media has become a mirror maze. Everyone reflects everyone else until originality dissolves into repetition. Freud might call it the superego, a voice dictating what makes us likeable. Except now, that voice is coded. Foucault would call it self-surveillance: we curate ourselves before anyone else can judge us.
The algorithm doesn’t punish deviation; it buries it. Conformity isn’t forced, it’s rewarded.
I used to think I dressed differently. That I was unique in a way only I could articulate. But then I scroll and see ten others doing the exact same thing- right down to the eyeliner and “niche” music taste. Every time I try to “be myself,” I realise I’m just playing a character I didn’t write.
Maybe authenticity isn’t purity. Maybe it’s a choice: choosing what to keep, what to reject, and what you let shape you. Maybe simply noticing the algorithm is a small rebellion.
The algorithm might’ve eaten my personality… but at least now, I’m learning to digest what it feeds me. And in a world that rewards replicas, staying slightly unpolished might be the last real act of rebellion.
