Everywhere I look, life has turned into a pitch. 

Writers are told to “find their niche” and stay within it. Artists turn themselves into “content creators.” Students are told to “network” like CEOs at twenty. Even conversations feel rehearsed, infected with strategy. 

At some point, sincerity became amateurish. You can’t just exist anymore—you have to market your existence. 

This isn’t limited to influencers or entrepreneurs. The expectation that every person should curate their identity as though they are running a campaign has seeped into every corner of modern life. We’re told to “build our personal brand,” to “network strategically,” to “be authentic—but consistent.” 

But there’s something deeply hollow in that language—the self has become a product to be managed, optimized, and sold. 

Nowhere does this feel more apparent—or more depressing—than in the cult of networking. I detest networking, not out of shyness, but because it rewards the opposite of sincerity. 

The premise is simple: gather a roomful of people, all pretending to care about one another while secretly calculating who might be useful. It is transactional intimacy disguised as connection. Every interaction hums with subtext: What can you do for me? How can I make myself appear valuable to you? 

“Authenticity,” too, has become a performance. The internet has turned sincerity into an aesthetic. Our grief, our outrage, our joy—all filtered through captions designed to strike the ideal balance between honesty and engagement. Authenticity isn’t real if it’s manufactured. 

Branding promises empowerment—control over how others see you. But what it really offers is containment. A brand must be consistent, predictable, easy to digest. A human being cannot be all those things at once. 

To live “on brand” is to live inside a cage you built yourself. It means second-guessing what fits your aesthetic, editing your thoughts to sound strategic, refusing to evolve because change looks inconsistent. It’s exhausting, and it’s lonely. 

We are told this is how you succeed—by being visible, recognizable, searchable. But visibility is not the same as meaning. A life optimized for exposure is rarely one built on depth.  

I know the irony of writing this. I’m packaging my anti-brand feelings into a branded form. I’m not naïve enough to think we can escape this entirely. 

The language of branding is the language of stability now. Networking pays bills. Self-promotion wins opportunities. Even writers and artists who hate the system must still play along just to be discovered. But there’s a difference between using the tools and letting them use you. 

The danger begins when marketing stops being a strategy and starts becoming an identity.  

I don’t want to be a brand. I don’t want to network, optimize or translate myself into something that sells. I want to speak to people without wondering if it advances me. I want to write things that don’t have a niche. I want to be allowed to contradict myself, to be unpolished, to disappear. 

Maybe the real rebellion now is to be unmarketable. To post without purpose. To disappear when you feel like it. To stop performing authenticity and start practicing it—quietly, privately, without an audience. 

I’m not a brand. I’m not a business. I’m a person, and I refuse to spend my life polishing my reflection. Maybe that means I’ll be invisible to the algorithm. Maybe it means I’ll never “network” properly. That’s fine. 

I’d rather be real than visible.