There is a peculiar discomfort that comes with being seen.
Not the kind of being seen that comes from love, or intimacy, or the quiet recognition of someone who knows your soul — but the kind that comes from numbers. Followers. Views. Reach. Engagement. The strange currency of relevance.
I have lived on both sides of that line.
There was a time when my posts would gather thousands of likes without effort, when visibility felt organic, almost incidental. And now, there are days when a post barely crosses a hundred. The algorithm shifts, the audience shifts, and somewhere within that, you are expected to remain unchanged — or perhaps, more accurately, endlessly adaptable.
But something happened recently that made me pause more deeply than fluctuating numbers ever could.
A friend — not a close one, but close enough — reached out. Casual conversation. He asked about my children. I told him, plainly, that I had just lost two of them. There are sentences in life that should alter the tone of everything that follows. That was one of them.
And yet, not even four hours later, the conversation pivoted.
A collaboration request.
A tag.
An opportunity.
It wasn’t even subtle.
He admitted, without quite admitting it, that he had gone to my profile, seen my following, seen my recent collaborations, and decided — as people do — that this was a moment worth leveraging. Strike while the iron is hot.
There was no malice in the traditional sense. Just… opportunism. The quiet, socially acceptable kind.
And that is what unsettled me.
Because this wasn’t an isolated moment. It echoed something another acquaintance — far more blunt, far less kind — had said to me recently. He questioned how many people in my life would remain if I were not visible, not followed, not useful to their digital presence. If I stopped making reels. If I stopped being “someone”.
At the time, I dismissed it as cynicism.
Now, I am not so sure.
Because when you occupy any form of public space — even a modest one — you become, whether you like it or not, a resource. A platform. A possibility. And people, consciously or otherwise, begin to orient themselves around that.
Some come for connection.
Some come for curiosity.
Some come for what you can offer.
And the difficult truth is — it is not always easy to tell the difference.
But here is where I stand, and perhaps where I have always stood:
I have never built my presence by attaching myself to someone else’s light. I know people who are more visible, more powerful, more widely recognised than I am — and yet, I have never felt the need to borrow their reach to validate my own. If something I create resonates, it travels. If it doesn’t, it rests. Both outcomes are equally acceptable to me.
Because for me, creation has never been about virality.
It has been about truth.
And truth, unfortunately, does not trend very well.
When I speak about grief, about injustice, about brutality, about the uncomfortable realities that sit beneath our carefully curated lives — the engagement drops. The applause quietens. The algorithm looks away.
But when I lean into easier narratives, into desire, into identity packaged for consumption — the numbers rise again.
This is not a complaint. It is an observation.
An honest one.
We are drawn to what entertains us, not necessarily to what challenges us. And yet, the things that change us are rarely the things that go viral.
So where does that leave someone like me?
Caught, perhaps, between two truths.
That visibility is part of my life now — whether I claim it or not. And that integrity must remain the centre of it — whether it is rewarded or not.
Yes, people will come into my life because of what I represent online.
Yes, some of them will leave when that representation no longer serves them.
Yes, some will stay only as long as there is something to gain.
But there will also be a few — always a few — who stay for reasons that cannot be measured in followers or framed in content.
And those are the only ones that have ever truly mattered.
The rest?
They are part of the noise that comes with being seen.
And perhaps the real work is not in silencing that noise — but in learning not to mistake it for music.
Hearts Still Care 