The Cultural Erosion of Meaning: Reclaiming Authenticity in An Engagement-Optimized World

I almost didn’t write this.

We have all been there. Hovering over that “Post” button, contemplating whether we should send it or not. That sudden worry creeping up on us from seemingly nowhere. Will this perform? And by asking ourselves that, we are self-censoring our thoughts for an invisible audience that might never care.

There’s more content than ever before. More voices. More reach. More tools for expression. And yet, there is an unmistakable loss of substance. An erosion of meaning.

It isn’t because we have stopped sharing.
It is because we have started performing.

We have become curators of our own consciousness, constantly calculating whether our thoughts are worth sharing before we’ve even finished articulating them. And somewhere in that mutation from authentic thought to optimized content, we have lost something essential.

There is a deeper cost, too. Culture is how we used to encounter different perspectives. Different ideas. Now, we are shown mostly a reflection of ourselves.

A culture without originality stops being a reflection of reality and becomes simply a hyperreal simulation, an illusion, of itself. Just as Jean Baudrillard argued in Simulacra and Simulation.

The Engagement Illusion

It’s a deceptively simple mechanism; share something authentic and see it dissipate into the void. Share a vague platitude wrapped in polished aesthetics of what’s currently popular and see it rise in the performance metrics. The dopamine hit arrives, so we learn and adapt. We perform.

Algorithms reward predictability, favoring repetition over originality, reaction over reflection.

It is as if we ourselves are being trained on performance content so that we can regurgitate variational hits of it. In some aspects, we have become Large Language Models of our own.

Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, calls this bad faith, the act of lying to ourselves to escape the terror of freedom. The algorithm becomes a digital prison, where inside we pre-edit. Not because we have to, but because we have internalized its values as our own.

When we are chasing the algorithm, we are not just compromising our voices, we’re outsourcing our identity to a system optimized for engagement, not meaning.

Beyond the personal compromise, it becomes a cultural one. When we pre-edit our thoughts, when the messy yet meaningful ideas get compressed into consumable bitesize content, when it’s rejected before even finished because it won’t perform; then we’re not only losing individual thoughts and voices, we’re homogenizing all expression into a handful templates that are popular at any given time.

Success is now a function of visibility, not value. Meaning has lost out to impressions. The noise of platitudes has drowned out the signal of growth.

A Case For Our Unoptimized Mind

But what the algorithm can’t measure, yet, is the impact of an authentic voice.

When you express your true unoptimized and unique self, you are not just creating content. You are building cultural enrichment. Your individual thoughts, struggles, personal insights, and weird perspectives, they are to be shared and cherished, not miniaturized into packet-sized soundbites. They are the very essence of what elevates our collective consciousness.

The dilution we’re experiencing isn’t inevitable. It’s a choice you make every time you value the popular over the meaningful, every time you prioritize engagement over depth.

But, you have agency. You have responsibility.

Authenticity is a practice. It’s intentional. As Sartre believed, it’s the conscious effort to take responsibility for your voice without relying on external validation. It’s choosing to share what matters to you, even if it won’t top the viral charts.

On Creating Meaning

The antidote isn’t to reject the technology. It is to reclaim our voices within it. It is to choose conscious intent over passive optimization.

Meaningful work is difficult because it requires conscious effort to both produce and to digest. But it is only by doing this work that you are rewarded by growth, and so are all those who come across what you create.

Meaningful work creates resonance, and real resonance compounds. Unpolished reflections and thoughts plant seeds for new thoughts, new ideas, new expressions.

Embrace the slow thought and reflection.
Write the thing that scares you, what you worry won’t perform.
Create for people, not the feeds.
Build as if no one is paying attention.

This is how your unique value comes to light. This is how meaning is created.

Conscious, intent-driven expression creates positive momentum. Each authentic act inspires another. This compounds into deeper connections, renewed wisdom, and a resurgence towards substance.

This is how cultural enrichment happens. Not through viral replication, but through the sharing of each unique human experience and viewpoint. When you give your true self, you make the culture richer, more nuanced, and more importantly, more alive.

The Choice of Authenticity

We are here to lead an abundant life, to grow, expand, to live more, and help others do the same. When we chase the algorithm, we leave a part of ourselves behind.

The attention-seeking world has created a lot of clutter, so our authentic voices matter more now than ever. In the age of algorithms our unfiltered expressions become a beacon of hope for the voices of humanity.

Let your voice be the signal that cuts through the noise. That’s how we build something that lasts.

We have agency and we have a responsibility.
To ourselves, and to the culture we are co-creating.