The cost of turning your life into content—and how I finally crashed out
I walked away from my six-figure Instagram and my life got exponentially better
The day I had to put my dog down, a post went out on my Instagram feed that showed me smiling in an ad for face cream.
Not because I’d posted it that day—it had been queued up in my scheduler app weeks earlier, part of a brand partnership I’d committed to back when that date was just another square on the calendar. But there it was: me, smiling at the camera, glowing skin, enthusiastic caption about hydration and self-care, while I was actually sitting on the floor in a vet’s office holding my dog as she died.
Nobody who saw that post knew. Why would they? The whole point of what I was doing—what I’d gotten really, really good at doing—was making sure nobody ever knew. The performance was the product. The life was just the raw material I mined for content.
I started using Instagram as a business platform in 2020 when the pandemic killed my marketing agency. Most of my clients were in hospitality, and when the government forced shutdowns, my revenue went to zero almost overnight. So I pivoted to social media because… well, I was good at it. I’d just spent the last few years doing marketing for clients so I figured, why not try it for myself? I grew my account from 1,000 followers to 35,000 in about 18 months. Brand partnerships, sponsorships, affiliate deals—before I knew it, I was making tens of thousands of dollars a month. The trajectory was insane. I was winning.
Except I wasn’t.
There’s a Black Mirror episode from 2016 called “Nosedive” that I think about often. In it, everyone rates every interaction on a five-star scale, and your score determines everything—where you can live, what you can rent, whether people will even talk to you. The protagonist, Lacie, wakes up and immediately checks her rating. 4.2. She scrolls through her feed, carefully liking posts, leaving enthusiastic comments, performing joy at other people’s vacations and babies and promotions. Every interaction is calculated and every emotion is optimized for maximum approval.
Lacie’s at a coffee shop and the barista hands her a latte with foam art. She gasps with exaggerated delight, snaps a photo, and posts it with the perfect caption. She rates the barista five stars. The barista rates her back. They both smile with their mouths but not their eyes. It’s a transaction disguised as a moment. She’s not actually tasting the coffee, she’s just thinking about how many points it’s worth.
I lived inside that episode for 18 months.
