You know, it’s 2026. We’ve had roughly three decades of mainstream internet culture bleeding and then dominating almost every aspect of human interaction, and one thing should be painfully obvious by now: we are absolutely drowning in communication. Opinions, reactions, declarations, outrage, jokes, hot takes, reposts, slogans, endless comments. Everyone is talking all the time. Every thought gets broadcast. Every emotional spike gets uploaded. Every bias gets turned into a performance.
That’s probably a serious societal problem in itself.
But one thing this era has made impossible to deny is also: when communication is constant, absence becomes loud. Silence becomes loud. Distance becomes loud. Disconnection becomes loud.
And because of that, I have very little patience anymore for people who genuinely seem confused when others quietly step away from them.
You know who I mean. They spend every day on social media ranting politically, ideologically, culturally, emotionally, whatever. Constantly posting. Constantly escalating. Constantly furious. Constantly performing certainty. And not just occasionally. Relentlessly. All year long. Every week is another meltdown, another declaration, another enemy, another smug dismissal of entire groups of people. Sometimes it’s just exhausting. Sometimes it’s ugly. Sometimes it crosses into outright cruelty, bigotry, or blatant indecency.
And then one day they try to casually communicate with you like none of that exists.
Meanwhile, I already muted them six months ago.
Or disconnected from them entirely.
Or stopped replying because every interaction started feeling anxious to me.
And what fascinates me is the genuine confusion people seem to have about this. Like they honestly believe there should be no social consequence whatsoever for publicly behaving like a human flamethrower 24 hours a day.
It’s bizarre, tbh.
It’s like somebody walking into a restaurant, smacking random customers in the back of the head, screaming obscenities across the room, tripping the waiter, knocking glasses off the bar, stealing food off people’s plates, pissing in the corner, and then calmly sitting down demanding table service with a straight face. And when management asks them to leave, they act shocked.
“What? What happened?”
That is social media behavior now. Constant public hostility followed by absolute bewilderment when people quietly disappear.
And no, I’m not talking about disagreement. Adults disagree. Adults debate. Adults see the world differently. That’s normal. Nuance exists, obviously.
I’m talking about people who make aggression their whole damn identity. People who turn outrage into their entire public presence. People who spend years broadcasting contempt and then somehow expect universal warmth and access afterward.
No. That’s not how this works.
People are reading what you post.
People are watching.
People are forming impressions whether you like it or not.
And sometimes those impressions become, “Yeah, I think I’m good on this person.”
That’s life.
Back in 1987, most people walked into a room as relative unknowns. Unless you were famous, nobody knew your inner world. Nobody knew your politics, your resentments, your obsessions, your biases, your compulsive need to scream at strangers about current events. You entered a social interaction as a human being standing in front of someone else, and discovery happened gradually.
Now? People walk into the room already carrying years of archived behavior attached to them.
Especially within industries, creative circles, social scenes, and professional communities. Look, people know. You already told them who you are on your social media. Repeatedly. Your comments. Your reposts. Your snarky little captions. Your rage bait. Your endless public contempt for everyone who doesn’t think exactly like you.
So when somebody quietly backs away, or stops replying, or disconnects from you entirely, acting stunned by it is absurd. You lit the forest on fire and then turned around wondering why nobody was standing next to you anymore.
“Wait, where’d everybody go?”
Come on, man.
And honestly, I think this comes down to self responsibility more than anything else. If you choose to aggressively broadcast yourself to the world every single day, fine. That’s your right. But understand what you’re doing. Understand that public behavior creates public perception. Understand that people make decisions based on what you repeatedly show them. You don’t have immunity to perform hostility nonstop and then pretend you’re a mystery.
And maybe the solution isn’t to become fake or silent or sanitized. I’m not saying people shouldn’t have opinions or convictions or passions, because of course they should.
But maybe there’s value in being reasonable. Maybe there’s value in emotional discipline. Maybe there’s value in understanding that being permanently hyper-reactive online is not strength. It’s not courage. It’s not authenticity. A lot of the time it’s just social napalm.
And if people eventually step away from the blast radius, you cannot honestly pretend you have no idea why.