When Caring Became Cringe

The aesthetics of detachment in a world on fire.

You have a name. You have a face.

In an era where the most powerful brands aren’t companies but people, what are you using yours for?

You don’t have to be an ~influencer~ to be a brand. If you post on socials, whether you have two million followers, two hundred, or twenty on your finsta. You’re participating in a system that turns your profile into a product. What you say (and don’t say) becomes your brand position.

And since we’ve all become brands, we’ve all been trained, subconsciously at least, to think like marketers. Is this “on brand?” Is it “brand safe?” Not just for ourselves, but for the profit hungry advertisers lurking above and below our Euro-summer thirst traps, shitposts and hot takes.

But “brand safe” is just another word for “approved.” Approved by the establishment, by the tech broligarchs, the mainstream media and the state. And what’s “approved” has little to do with truth.

Ecosystems collapse. Genocide unfolds in plain sight. But if the powers that be declare it legal, righteous, justified – even when it violates physics, international law, and basic common sense – that becomes the “safe” position.

The boundaries of brand safety aren’t drawn by ethics or truth. They’re drawn by power and profit, then self-enforced through the threat of being cast out not only from the virtual in-crowd, but from our workplace. 

“We just don’t feel like you’re a cultural fit”

We’ve been conditioned to believe that caring is cringe. That earnestness is embarrassing. That the only authentic response to mass suffering is ironic detachment.

We police ourselves through the anxiety of appearing annoying and ruining our rep. The system whispers:

“Don't make it about you.”
”Who are you to speak?”
”Are you centring yourself in someone else’s trauma?”
”What’s the point anyway?”

When your name and face are tied to a cause, you become vulnerable. Taking a stance is risky, so rather than stand up, we shut up and end up standing for nothing and no one. Not even ourselves.

Social media promised connection but delivered social control, selling us the illusion of community whilst making us (feel) more alone than ever.

Meanwhile, the real bonds that once cultivated a sense of responsibility to each other and held society together (unions, neighbourhoods, third spaces), our networks for organising and solidarity, have withered away.

And when someone does try to organise collective action in the virtual spaces we have left, we roll our eyes and scroll on by.

Past hope.
Past calls to action.
Past children under rubble.

We know the world is burning.
We know there’s injustice.
We know systems are collapsing.
But who are we to stop it? That’s someone else’s job.

Onward to cynical memes that prove just how much we couldn’t care less.

We tell ourselves not caring is self-care, that it’s “protecting our peace”, whilst children are blown to pieces and the planet slips past the point of no return. But there is no peace in our silence; the violence we scroll past today comes for us tomorrow.

Every day we choose comfort over courage, we’re choosing one side over the other.

There’s no neutral in genocide.
There’s no neutral when children are being starved.
There’s no neutral ground when the ocean swallows the land.

There is only resistance to oppression or assistance to the oppressor.

The only moral choice is to resist. And if our names and faces have become our brands, then we have the responsibility to add our brands to the resistance.

We must unapologetically call for justice and plaster our names and faces next to truth. 

The same system that punishes us for caring collapses the moment enough of us stop caring about the punishment.