Filtered Realities and Flash Sale Feelings: When Aesthetics Replace Thought
We came. We posted. We dissociated.
This series is for anyone who’s ever doomscrolled through Reddit, rage-reacted on Facebook, filtered their soul on Instagram, or gotten life advice from a guy named Brad on TikTok who may or may not be sponsored by a face serum made of sadness and citric acid.
In these three parts, we’ll dive into the unfiltered reality of social media’s psychological theme park—each platform its own bizarre ecosystem of delusion, performance, and cognitive whiplash. Some try to be helpful. Some pretend they’re still relevant. Others never left the deep end in the first place.
This is not just satire. It’s a survival guide. A roast. A reckoning. And probably a cry for help.
So grab your emotional support water bottle, silence your notifications, and let’s take a guided tour through the apps that broke our attention spans and sold them back to us with a promo code.
Instagram:
Flavor of Cognitive Dissonance: Filtered Desperation with a Side of Influencer Glaze
Instagram used to be about sharing moments. You know…your dog, your dinner, that one sunset that made you feel things. Now? It’s like walking into a department store where every aisle is a different stranger lip-syncing or trying to sell you “authenticity” in 30-second bursts of over-filtered, algorithm-friendly dopamine.
Following people? Pointless. You’ll be twelve scrolls deep into dental surgery hacks and strangers dancing in their kitchens before you see a single post from your best friend.
Instagram doesn’t want you to connect with your people. It wants you to stay lost in the For You maze, sedated by reels and slowly forgetting why you opened the app in the first place. It’s like social media gaslighting.
And then there are the filters.
The funny ones? Comedy gold. Eyeballs on chins, demon voices, whatever…love them.
But the glamour filters? That’s where it gets uncanny. Suddenly every face is eerily symmetrical, poreless, and just… not human. We’ve entered the Valley of the Enhanced, where your cousin Becky looks like a deepfake of herself and no one blinks twice.
The dissonance is wild:
“Be real, be raw, be you… but also here’s a filter that turns you into a Renaissance goddess with Bambi eyes and a jawline sharp enough to cut glass.”
Instagram’s new validation currency?
Look like a hyper-real dream version of yourself while pretending you’re “just vibing.”
It’s not self-expression anymore…it’s self-distortion with a follower count.
And somewhere, buried deep in the algorithmic rubble, is your actual friend’s post. Probably from three days ago. Probably cropped weird.
TikTok
Flavor of Cognitive Dissonance: Unregulated Serotonin Dust with Spinning-Wheel Side Effects
Oh. My. Algorithm.TikTok used to be the land of silly dances, inside jokes, and deeply cursed trend audio that you couldn’t get out of your head for weeks. Now? It’s like QVC mated with chaos and birthed a social media feed where someone is always selling you something with the urgency of a limited-time apocalypse.
TikTok has officially gone from “Hey, look at me dance in my kitchen” to “Here’s a skincare serum made of radioactive glitter, shipped from a warehouse next to a haunted sock factory in Shenzhen.” And people are eating it. Literally. Sometimes it’s lipstick. Sometimes it’s dried fish snacks. Sometimes it’s both.
Yes, people still dance. Yes, the comedy still slaps.
But now, between the jokes and oddly satisfying slime clips, there’s a woman whispering about a “miracle lip plumper” made in a lab that definitely wasn’t FDA-approved and might’ve once been a floor cleaner. And you know it’s sketchy because the packaging is just a blank pouch with Comic Sans instructions that say “Apply to entire life.”
But here’s the cognitive dissonance:
We don’t trust institutions anymore… but Brenda from Nebraska with a ring light and a 40% discount code? Say less.
People are putting mystery creams on their faces, eating snack packs that look like they were smuggled out of a dystopian vending machine, and lighting their rooms with neon sunset lamps that might also be Bluetooth speakers. Or toasters. It’s unclear.
And the kicker? Some of it works. You order a ridiculous gadget expecting a complete scam, and suddenly it’s the best egg separator you’ve ever used. So now you’re in this constant state of:
“This is probably a scam…but what if it’s the one time it isn’t?”
Stickers? Safe.
Gadgets? Dice roll.
Anything that goes in or on your body? Consult your ancestors.
Also, shoutout to Tikemu (Tiktok shop) the spiritual offspring of Temu, Wish, and a carnival prize booth…just waiting to leap through your phone screen with a spinning wheel screaming, “CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve won 700 collapsible silicone bowls and a haunted jade roller!”
TikTok isn’t just a platform…it’s an unregulated mall built inside a rave.
And we. Are. LIVING. In it.
If you’ve ever bought a glow serum from someone doing a dance challenge—congratulations, you’re part of the problem. Tune in tomorrow when we peel back the digital curtain on platforms still running on nostalgia, networking, and unprocessed family trauma.”
#NoFilterOnlyFeelings
Next up: the elders. The ones that helped birth the madness—Facebook, LinkedIn, and the unsupervised chaos known as YouTube. Also, yes… we found Myspace.
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