Nowadays, there is something strangely performative about how people build themselves.
I don’t mean this in the obvious sense of social media — though that is part of it — but more in the way that identity itself is starting to feel like something assembled with a subtle awareness of being watched.
Identity is usually described as something discovered, something that becomes clearer with time. When one considers how frequently it is shaped in response to an audience, whether tangible or merely imagined, identity appears more like a process of construction. It becomes something adaptive, assembled, and reassembled according to context and perceived expectation.
And yet, despite this inherent flexibility, there is still an expectation of coherence.
Individuals are expected to “be themselves,” as though that self is consistent and transferable across environments. However, the conditions of those environments are in and of themselves not stable. What is affirmed in one setting may be dismissed in another; what feels natural in private may seem incongruous in public. The idea of a single and unchanging self becomes considerably difficult to sustain, not because identity is absent, but because it is persistently mediated by shifting surroundings.
This creates a fundamental contradiction: on one hand, there is more freedom than ever to define oneself. On the other hand, that same expansion of possibility exists alongside constant visibility. Every version of the self can be seen, evaluated, and remembered. Nothing exists entirely without context. So the process of becoming someone is no longer solely internal; it is external, shaped under the condition of how that version of the self is received. This is not to say that identity is entirely artificial in the slightest.
Every thought, preference, and value that someone holds is real; it’s just the way they are presented — or even understood — which becomes influenced by the awareness of being observed.
For students, that can make the process of “figuring yourself out” more complicated than it sounds. It is not just about understanding what you like or believe, but about deciding how much of that to show, when to show it, and in what form. It can begin to feel as though one is occupying two positions simultaneously: both the person and the curator of the person as it is being communicated.
As the individual is moving through the events presently while simultaneously being responsible for shaping how those events are framed and interpreted. Neither role fully precedes the other in a hierarchical sense, and both influence the final result.
If identity is always being adjusted, even slightly, in response to context, then it raises a question: Is there a version of the self that exists completely outside of that influence? Or is the self simply the sum of all those adjustments, all those small decisions made in response to the world? There is no clear answer to that.
However, it may be that the value of this question doesn’t lie in answering it. Perhaps the aim is not to locate some pristine, unmediated version of identity beneath all external influence, but to become aware of the process itself.
This form of awareness doesn’t dissolve the tension between authenticity and performance, nor does it reconcile them into a single coherent category. Instead, it makes that tension easier to navigate. A growing ability to distinguish between acting in a way that feels natural or adjusting due to external influence is formed. The objective isn’t to separate authenticity from performance as though they exist in isolation from one another. In fact, they often overlap and affect one another.
Something that feels natural can still be configured by awareness of how it will be received, and something that is carefully presented can come from a real place. Putting this into consideration, it doesn’t make sense to treat the two as completely opposing notions. The tensioninarguably still exists, and doesn’t go away, but it becomes something that can be observed rather than unconsciously enacted.
From this point, it is also worth noting how people often gravitate toward labels as a means of articulating who they are. Labels — whether ideological or cultural — serve as a shorthand for identity, compressing something complex into something more socially graspable. They can serve as tools of expression, but also as mechanisms of placement: a way of signaling where one might belong, or where one hopes to be understood.
Labels can solidify what is still in motion, or reduce something that is expansive into something prematurely fixed. While they may order belonging, they can also create pressure to remain consistent with what was once declared, even when the internal reality has already changed. As a result, identity becomes something that is both clarified and constrained by the very terms used to define it.
In the end, what emerges is not a clear answer to what identity is supposed to be, but a clearer sense of how unstable it already is. Identity doesn’t settle into a single, permanent form; it shifts through context, perception, and the need to be understood by others as well as oneself. Even the tools used to bring identity stability are merely temporary structures built on top of a moving object. To reiterate, this doesn’t make identity meaningless. I didn’t write this to define identity or to resolve the tension that surrounds it. If anything, this was an attempt to make that tension more visible.
Authors Note:
This piece is an essay that explores identity as something fluid, shaped by both internal and external factors. It was inspired by how constant visibility makes it harder to separate who someone is in comparison to how they present themselves. I was interested in how something so intrinsic can be shaped by everything outside of it. This essay lingers more on that instability. I hope that readers start to notice those same patterns in their own lives and how easily identity shifts depending on context, and how much of it is influenced by who is watching.
Written by Nylah Hill
Vol. 03: Absurdity
Leave a Reply