i want to be witnessed, not consumed
on parasocial relationships, oversharing online, and what it means to perform intimacy on the internet
i don’t remember the first time i put a piece of myself online, but i do remember the feeling - that little spark when someone saw it. when someone said “same.” when someone reposted my words like they meant something - and maybe they did.
somewhere along the way, sharing stopped being just an instinct; it became a rhythm, a reflex, a ritual. something i did without even thinking, dress a feeling up in lowercase, wrap it in a caption, and send it off. sometimes, i didn’t even know how i felt until i tried to make it pretty.
and it worked. people connected. people related. people loved me, i think, or at least they loved the version of me that knew how to translate sadness and emotions into tiktoks and cute instagram stories. longing into aesthetics, loneliness into something screenshot-worthy.
but lately i keep wondering : do they see me?
or do they just scroll through the glow i give off?
the performance of closeness
the internet made it easy to feel close to people. too easy, maybe.
you read someone’s post for long enough, and suddenly you think you know them. you think you get their humour, their heartbreaks, their habits. you think you’re inside the story - not watching it from the window. and it’s tempting, right? to believe that liking someone’s vulnerability means you’ve earned access to it.
but here’s the thing : relating isn’t knowing.
and reading someone isn’t the same as being close to them.
i think we’ve forgotten that.
because online, we don’t just share - we stage. we curate intimacy. we reveal things in just the right light, just the right tone. we give away pieces of ourselves that feel personal, but are actually polished. cropped. lit like a confessional. we overshare strategically - not to deceive, but to be loved for it. to be understood faster.
and it creates this illusion of closeness. like if i let you see the softest parts of me, maybe you’ll stay. maybe you’ll care. maybe it’ll cout as connection. but it isn’t always love, it is often consumption.
you become the girl who writes pretty pain. the guy who says what everyone’s thinking. the account with feelings people project onto. your heartbreak becomes their aesthetic. your grief their content. and the self you showed gets swallowed.
they don’t want to witness you, they want to feel something, and you’re the vessel.
what it means to be seen
real intimacy isn’t loud. it doesn’t go viral. it doesn’t depend on metrics or comments or whether your vulnerability resonated with thousands of strangers.
being witnessed - truly witnessed - is quieter than that. it’s someone listening all the way through. it’s someone remembering your least poetic detail. it’s not always beautiful; it’s sometimes boring, but it’s real.
and the truth is : the internet can’t give you that.
it can echo. it can amplify. it can make you feel understood - momentarily. but it can’t hold you when you’re not saying anything. it can’t recognise the version of you that exists beyond your words. it sees what you perform. it scrolls past what you don’t.
that’s not inherently bad, but it’s incomplete.
so you have to protect what matters. you have to decide what’s yours. what gets shared, and what gets kept. what you say for resonance, and what you say for truth. you have to reming yourself that you are not content. that you are not a feeling people borrow to caption their photos.
you are a full person and you deserve to be witnessed, not consumed.
if you’re wondering
i’m giulia. i study art history, cinema, and literature, and i write to hold onto things — books, ideas, fleeting moods, late-night conversations that stick. this space is for the quiet stuff: stories, films, friendships, attention, and all the little things that linger.
you can find me on instagram @u.k1y0, right here, or on letterboxd pretending i’m funny and not deeply moved by everything i watch.
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