Everything Is Content. Nothing Is Sacred.
How platforms turned people into products and rewired what we find rewarding
There was a time when making content felt like a side pursuit. A curiosity. You’d stumble onto a food blog, find a travel diary tucked into some quiet corner of the internet, watch a shaky YouTube upload filmed during a cross-country road trip. It felt voyeuristic, like you were freely walking through someone else’s mind. The boundaries between private life and public expression were still intact. You lived. And then maybe, if you felt like it, you shared.
That order has flipped.
Now, the default is that you share. You broadcast. You document. Life itself has become raw material for a feed that never stops asking for more. Platforms have trained us to believe that living and posting are one and the same, that proof of existence is a trail of videos and captions left behind in the algorithm’s archive.
In the early dot-com era, blogs were intentional. Words and photos were crafted carefully and blasted out to the void. Then came Facebook, which made sharing between friends the default. YouTube told us to “broadcast yourself,” and we did. Instagram turned daily life into a performative lifestyle. TikTok collapsed it all into one scroll: faster, flatter, frictionless.
This wasn’t just a shift in platforms. It was a shift in values. The so-called creator economy didn’t just empower users. It conscripted them. Platforms rebranded free labor as freedom of expression. Creative work that was once framed as self‑fulfillment is now treated as professional labor shaped by the logic of platform capitalism. They reframed personal identity as brand. They trained us to believe our thoughts mattered more when performed, our meals more when filmed, our lives more when posted. And we believed them. We gave up time, attention, and selfhood for the chance to be seen, on platforms we don’t own, governed by algorithms we don’t control.
In 2025, the creator economy is valued to be between $190 billion and $250 billion, depending on the source. Some forecasts expect it to surpass half a trillion dollars by 2027. There are now more than 200 million people worldwide who identify as creators, yet fewer than 4 percent earn over $100,000 per year. It’s a booming industry, but most of the fuel goes to a very few.
Some of those few have deservedly thrived. Musicians found new audiences. Artists launched careers. Marginalized voices carved out space. The promise of democratized media wasn’t false. It was incomplete.
Because then came the flood.
Which brings us to Jack Nauseef.
He stares into the camera from his bed and whispers: “To anyone who hates on Jesus…” Another video: “It’s not cool to be lustful.” His tone is confessional and his delivery urgent, as if he’s breaking news from God himself.
He’s not an anomaly. He’s an inevitability. What he’s really doing is exactly what TikTok told him to do: take his life, his thoughts, his faith, and turn them into content. He believes he’s offering gospel. What he’s offering is labor.
And then he bristles when the machine responds. Trolls, skeptics, laughter, scorn, the normal weather of the internet. It’s largely outnumbered by praise and support, but still, he makes a video to respond to the “haters”, trying to reclaim authority, as if one more video might silence the noise. TikTok definitely doesn’t mind the extra video.
What he wants is broadcast without friction, a pulpit without a congregation. Religion, morality, and personal conviction are not universal truths, and leave it up to the internet to ensure they will never be received as such. The moment you turn gospel into content, you invite disagreement. To expect otherwise is not faith. It’s folly.
Jack credits Chase Ridgeway for pulling him in to the creator spotlight, another young man whose content blends discipline, faith, and aesthetic polish into a lifestyle built for the scroll. He’s not exactly preaching, and he’s not exactly selling, but he’s doing both just enough to grow a following. In one TikTok, Ridgeway smiles into the camera outside a SXSW chocolate pop-up, holding up a sample wrapped in gold foil. The screen reads: “10:26am — Trying Dubai Chocolate.” It’s a small, forgettable moment. But it’s also everything: a man filming himself eating a scalpel-crafted luxury, in a curated space built for content, under the gaze of brands, state, and algorithms.
What he’s holding isn’t just a snack. It’s a global marketing asset wrapped in manufactured virality. The so-called “Dubai chocolate” isn’t a product born from culture. It’s a centuries-old Levantine tradition rebranded as a Dubai invention and catapulted into global consciousness through state-driven media, influencer marketing, and algorithmic amplification.
Ridgeway may not know it, but he’s not just promoting a chocolate bar. He’s participating in a nation-branding campaign. The system works best when its participants don’t realize they’re in it.
This participation is precisely what makes Ridgeway’s influence so powerful. It’s not just spiritual. It’s aspirational. Whether he’s sampling luxury chocolate at a branded pop-up or standing next to a Spotify logo with a free drink, he’s modeling a lifestyle where personality and corporate partnership seamlessly blend. A generation raised on the idea that personal brand is everything sees a man becoming a billboard and calls it success. Where does self-expression end and self-marketing begin? The Dubai chocolate moment provides the answer: they don’t end anywhere. They’re one and the same.
You can already see the apples falling. Take Jake Cohen. He’s not on the level of Jack and Chase. But that’s not what the platform asks for. A quick scroll through his content reveals his routine: exercise obsession, calorie deficits, nicotine pouches, crash diets masquerading as motivation and advice. He piggybacks on Jack’s visibility, literally and figuratively, and pushes the formula into a different territory. Not because he’s malicious, but because that’s what TikTok rewards: escalation. More noise, more output, more content. Always more. And when it’s all wrapped up as life advice, that’s where lines get drawn.
This turn-everything-into-content mentality spreads far beyond wannabe spiritual influencers and self-help gurus.
Take a look at another corner of the internet, where a woman brags about bartering down the cost of a $200 vacation dinner by offering the hotel “content” instead of cash. She doesn’t even pretend it’s about creativity. It’s just hustle. “I don’t have a zillion followers,” she writes, “but my engagement is bomb, so I just ask for whatever I want now.” The audacity is striking. The entitlement reeks. And basic responsibility has been stripped from the exchange.
It’s a perfect snapshot of the rat race. Dinner isn’t just dinner anymore. It’s leverage. An opportunity. The food isn’t just food. It’s an asset. The joy of the meal no longer comes from the moment itself, but from the transaction it enables. Content has become currency, and in a system with no limits on how much can be produced, that poses a threat.
This is where the whole system reveals its rot. Jack thinks he’s speaking universal truth. Chase thinks he’s building a personal brand. Jake thinks he’s helping people get fit. The dinner table trader thinks she’s being clever. But their work is the platform. However sacred or transactional, heartfelt or hollow the content is, the machine doesn’t distinguish between their intentions. It just wants more. Burnout. Slip up. Disappear. The algorithm doesn’t care. It’s already manufactured your replacement.
The danger isn’t just that people think their every thought or action deserves a platform. The danger is that platforms have convinced people that performing their personality is necessary, legitimate work. A climate scientist explaining carbon capture can educate the public. A highly educated therapist sharing evidence-based strategies can help people heal. A craftsperson showcasing handmade goods can build meaningful economic value. But morning thoughts from bed? Junk science from the gym bro? Random relationship advice from a single stranger? Extreme health and fitness content disguised as wellness? That’s not craft serving an audience. That’s manufactured personality feeding an endless scroll.
The inability to step away isn’t simply about personal fortitude. It’s structural in design. Platforms engineer dependency using variable ratio reinforcement schedules, the same psychological mechanism that powers gambling addiction. Unpredictable likes and comments trigger dopamine releases that create compulsive checking behaviors. Adam Alter documents how tech companies deliberately employ these addiction techniques, while former Google ethicist Tristan Harris reveals how features like infinite scroll are designed to maximize “time on device.” Stop posting, and you risk algorithmic irrelevance.
What makes this engineered dependency particularly insidious is who it targets. The neuroscience is clear: a typical thirteen-year-old’s prefrontal cortex won’t be fully developed for at least another decade. This is the brain region responsible for decision-making and impulse control. It’s the most important part of the brain for human development. As one researcher puts it, adolescents are entering the digital world with “all gas pedal and no brakes.”
Sometimes the consequences are more than algorithmic irrelevance.
In June 2025, a 19-year-old named Renna O’Rourke from Tempe, Arizona died after inhaling computer dusting spray. The act was part of a viral TikTok challenge known as “dusting” or “chroming,” which involves inhaling toxic household chemicals like keyboard cleaner to get high. Renna went into cardiac arrest and was declared brain-dead after nearly a week in the hospital.
According to TikTok’s Community Guidelines Enforcement Report for Jan–Mar 2025, 94.3% of content found to violate policies was removed within 24 hours. The scale sounds impressive until you realize what it really means: content that never should have existed in the first place is still reaching users, gaining traction, and contributing to the feed’s churn before it’s wiped. On a platform optimized for speed and replication, 24 hours is an eternity. Furthermore, they’re admitting to ~6% of violating content going unchecked for far longer, if at all. That’s not nearly good enough.
The paradox is real: I can critique these platforms while using them, because they’ve made themselves essential infrastructure. Two things can be true simultaneously. The system can be fundamentally broken and be a necessary evil for someone trying to reach an audience. That’s not hypocrisy. That’s the trap working exactly as designed.
Platform executives should know this. Algorithm designers definitely know this. They also know that nearly two-thirds of TikTok’s user base falls within the 13 to 24 age range, precisely the demographic whose brains are most vulnerable to the variable reward schedules and infinite scroll mechanisms they’ve deliberately engineered. This isn’t accidental. It’s negligent at best, predatory at worst.
TikTok now captures 32% of Americans’ total social media time, significantly outpacing Facebook and Instagram, which each account for 20%. Users average nearly an hour daily on the platform. Since launching less than a decade ago, TikTok has amassed over 1.5 billion users. If trends continue, the average person will spend over 11% of their life on social media, with TikTok alone accounting for nearly 7% alone, the equivalent of five full years contributed to the scroll.
This level of engagement isn’t accidental.
It’s the outcome of deliberate design.
And it’s working exactly as intended. Just, maybe not in your favor.
Content is everywhere, yet meaning is scarce. Everyone is broadcasting, yet nobody is truly heard.
I feel ALL of this. Thank you for sharing this thiughtful post. I don't use Tik Tok but I do use insta, FB and Substack (obvs) and everything you have written about addiction is real. I regularly have to remind myself that social media is a tool, not the be all and end all of my validation.
You hit the nail on the head when you said it has become essential infrastructure. If you want a comms related role, or to sell a product, you have to use it.
That said, I love the connections I have made on Substack, and the skills I have learnt through posting.