A Body By The Algorithm
The screen of my phone reflects more than my face—it mirrors a peculiar modern emptiness. Thousands of followers double-tap their approval while my dinner table sits empty, the chair across from me collecting dust instead of conversation. Each notification chirps like a mechanical bird in a digital forest, singing songs of connection that echo in my empty apartment.
11:47 PM on a Thursday. The memory crystallizes with the sharp edges of turning points, that moment when everything shifts and nothing can be undone. Post-workout sweat traced the lines of my muscles like nature's contour map, each droplet highlighting the definition I'd chased for months. In the gym mirror, fluorescent lights carved shadows beneath each curve and valley of my physique, and for once, I looked exactly like I thought I should. The camera clicked. My thumb hovered over "Your Story" for three heartbeats before pressing down. A tweet followed minutes later. By midnight, my phone burned hot with attention across platforms, each notification a spark in a fire I didn't know I was building.
My journey into digital commodification began through the viewfinder of an old Nikon camera. I started with travel photos - hiking trails, coastal sunsets, city streets - but I started adding my face to the frame, wanting to give my account a human touch—until skin became the only currency that mattered. The captions were earnest then—poetic captions, personal reflections, small truths I'd discovered while wandering with my lens. But algorithms have their own poetry, written in engagement metrics and view counts, and they spoke a simpler truth: skin sells.
That first "accidental" shirtless post ignited something in the digital ether. Engagement quadrupled overnight, comments overflowed with flame emojis and hungry praise, and the dopamine rush hit harder than the first time I had sex—that addictive blend of validation and vulnerability, of being desired and displayed. I told myself it was still about photography—the interplay of light across deltoids, the composition of shadows in the valleys between abs. Self-deception, I learned, is an art form all its own.
The validation hit new heights when Yahoo featured me in their weekly "Fitspo" column. They praised my "transformation journey" and commitment to fitness—words that felt like daggers of irony given the crushing weight of maintaining that image. The feature laid bare my strict ketogenic diet and five-day training regimen, complete with professional photos that captured every cut and contour I'd sacrificed countless hours to sculpt. What the article couldn't capture was the exhaustion behind the eyes, the way each workout felt like paying interest on a debt that kept growing. The Yahoo spotlight became another mirror in my house of digital illusions, reflecting a version of myself that was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
The feature's professional photos set a new standard for my social media presence. My body, once just part of my story, transformed into both medium and message. Each post required dozens of takes, hundreds of micro-adjustments, an obsessive search for the perfect intersection of angle and light where digital perfection aligned with the impossible standard in my head. I learned to edit like a surgeon—deepen this shadow, sharpen that line, enhance but never obviously enough to trigger the "edited" marker. The more followers I gained, the more of myself I lost. I was becoming a hologram, a carefully curated collection of pixels and hashtags where a person used to be.
As my digital self grew more polished, my mental health began to crack into the kind of depression that doesn't photograph well, living in the spaces between posts, in the grey areas that resist Valencia filters and preset edits. I found myself checking my body on every reflective surface—windows, mirrors, even my phone's black screen became another chance to judge every angle. Food stopped being food, becoming just numbers to weigh against likes. The algorithms became my religion, and I lived by their mysterious rules. Each perfect post was a moment of relief followed by the crushing pressure to maintain the standard, like holding your breath underwater and knowing you'll need air again soon.
Genuine relationships withered under the harsh ring light of digital fame. Friends couldn't compete with the constant stream of validation from strangers. Conversations over coffee felt dull compared to the electric thrill of watching engagement numbers climb. I began measuring all interactions against social media metrics – why invest in dinner with three friends when I could reach thousands from my couch? The math seemed simple, but I was calculating in a currency that couldn't buy genuine connection.
When the crash came, it wasn't with a dramatic announcement or a final post. Just silence. Each quiet notification felt like another bulb burning out in an already dark room. The withdrawal was physical—my hands trembling as they reached for a phone that no longer lit up with constant validation. The aftermath stripped me bare in ways no camera ever had. At least the obsessive posting, the desperate maintenance of physical perfection, had given structure to the void. Without it, I faced an emptiness no filter could soften.
Now, I exist in the liminal space between versions of myself: the digital demigod with abs of steel and the human being who sometimes eats carbs after 6 PM. Each bite of "non-compliant" food carries the weight of potential posts never made, of followers drifting away like digital leaves in an autumn I created. My bathroom scale sits in the corner like a judge, each number a verdict on my worth. Some mornings, I step on it compulsively, watching decimal points fluctuate with the weight of my coffee, each slight increase sending me spiraling. Other days, I can't bear to look at it at all, knowing the number will haunt me like a ghost of my former filtered self.
The hardest truth isn't about body image or validation addiction—it's admitting that I'll probably never entirely quit. My phone still sits silent on Friday nights, but I know it's only a matter of time before I post again. In coffee shops, I watch groups of friends laugh over shared jokes, composing the perfect caption in my head: "Sometimes the best conversations happen offline #authenticity #coffeeshop #life." The irony doesn't escape me. The muscles of genuine friendship have atrophied from years of digital performance, but instead of rehabilitation, I'm learning to live with the disability.
I tell myself the next post will be different, just architecture, sunsets, mountains. Yet I know that when my body looks particularly lean, when the lighting hits just right, I'll take that shirt off and frame the shot. I'll tell myself it's just one thirst trap among more meaningful content, like an alcoholic convincing themselves that one drink doesn't break sobriety. I'll watch the likes roll in, feel that familiar dopamine hit, and hate myself a little for loving it so much. I'll post something profound about self-acceptance the next day to balance it out, and the cycle will continue.
The beating heart in my chest counts out a rhythm more complex than any engagement metric, but it's a rhythm I've learned to remix with notifications and likes. Some days, I look in the mirror and don't know who I'm supposed to be anymore—I started as a photographer and writer who loved sharing his work, but somewhere along the way, the validation from showing my body consumed everything else. I'm caught somewhere in between, trying to figure out how to exist in both worlds. Maybe there isn't some grand story of escape or redemption here. Perhaps it's just about learning to live with these digital ghosts, knowing they'll always be there, whispering from my phone screen. Some nights I still dream in filters and hashtags, and maybe that's just part of who I am now.