The Death of Individuality

Bertha Hunt’s hand trembled as she struck the match.

It was Easter Sunday, 1929. Fifth Avenue was a river of hats and righteousness—men in fedoras, women in cloche hats, all streaming out of St. Patrick’s Cathedral into crisp April sunshine. They looked expensive and felt virtuous, a dangerous combination in Manhattan.

Bertha stood on the corner of 49th Street, twenty-three years old, wearing her best dress—pale blue silk that had cost her two weeks’ salary. Her cloche hat was tilted at precisely the angle recommended by Vogue. She looked like the sort of young woman who knew which fork to use for oysters and would faint at the sight of blood.

Which was exactly why Mr. Bernays had chosen her.

The match flared. She brought it to the Lucky Strike cigarette clamped between her lips. Across the street, a policeman’s hand moved towards his truncheon. A woman smoking on the street was not just improper—it was criminal. Something prostitutes did. But this woman wore a hat that cost more than his weekly wage. Did he arrest her or tip his cap?

He froze, paralysed by class.

Bertha inhaled. The tobacco was harsh. She had practised exactly twice—both times in Mr. Bernays’s office three days ago, coughing until her eyes watered whilst he coached her technique. “Don’t inhale too deeply. You’re performing enjoyment.”

The flashbulbs erupted like artillery. Pop-pop-pop. The photographers had been positioned perfectly, tipped off hours earlier. Next to her, five other young women struck their own matches. Ruth. Dorothy. Margaret. All secretaries. All carefully vetted. All wearing their best dresses and most terrified smiles.

A reporter—planted, briefed, probably slipped a twenty-dollar note—shouted from the crowd: “Miss Hunt! What are you doing?”

Bertha looked directly at him. She had rehearsed this line seventeen times in front of her bedroom mirror.

“I am lighting a Torch of Freedom,” she said.

Perfect. The cameras exploded again. The crowd gasped. Someone’s grandmother clutched her pearls.

Bertha took another drag, trying not to cough. Her heart hammered. Would she be arrested? Would her name be in the papers? Would her mother disown her? But also: would she be famous? Would this matter? Would she—a secretary from Brooklyn who made fourteen dollars a week—finally be someone?

The moment lasted ninety seconds. Then the photographers scattered. They had their shot.

A man in a dark suit materialised beside her. One of Mr. Bernays’s assistants.

“Well done,” he said quietly. “You can put it out now.”

She dropped the cigarette and crushed it beneath her shoe.

“Will my name be in the papers?”

“Possibly. Mr. Bernays will be in touch.”

He vanished into the crowd.

Bertha stood alone on the pavement, her silk dress fluttering in the April wind, wondering what exactly she had just done.

*****

The next morning, the New York Times ran the headline: “Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as Gesture of ‘Freedom.'”

The photograph was perfect. Bertha in profile, cigarette held aloft like the Statue of Liberty’s torch, her face a mask of determined rebellion.

The story went around the world. Within months, women across America were lighting cigarettes on street corners, in restaurants, in places that would have been unthinkable a year earlier.

The American Tobacco Company’s sales to women increased by 300% in eighteen months.

Bertha Hunt received exactly one thing for her role in this revolution: a carton of Lucky Strikes with a note: “Thank you for your service. —E.B.”

She smoked them all. By 1932, she was buying her own. By 1935, a pack a day. By 1940, a chronic cough. By 1955, the cough was blood-flecked and the doctors used words like “tumour” and “inoperable.”

She died in 1956, aged fifty, in a charity ward in Brooklyn. Cause of death: bronchogenic carcinoma secondary to chronic tobacco use.

She never got a cut of the profits. She got a photograph, a brief moment of fame, and a death sentence she purchased one pack at a time.

She thought she was sticking it to the patriarchy. In reality, she was the patriarchy’s most valuable employee. She worked for free. And she paid for the privilege with her life.

But here is what should haunt you: Bertha Hunt believed it was her idea.

Three days before the Easter Parade, Edward Bernays had explained why she was perfect for this “movement.”

“You represent the modern woman,” he said, fingers steepled. “Independent. Educated. Not content to live by Victorian rules. Women can vote now. They can work. But they cannot smoke on the street without being treated like a prostitute. It is absurd. It is unjust. And someone needs to challenge it. That someone could be you.”

Bertha had felt something bloom in her chest. Yes. This was unjust. Why shouldn’t she smoke if she wanted to?

“What would I need to do?” she asked.

And Bernays had smiled.

What Bertha did not know—what she would never know—was that Edward Bernays did not care about women’s rights. He cared about George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company, who had a problem: half the population was not buying his product.

*****

THE AMERICAN TOBACCO COMPANY STRATEGY MEETING, 1928

A mahogany-panelled boardroom, 40th floor, Manhattan. Eight MEN in suits sit around a table. GEORGE WASHINGTON HILL, red-faced, perpetually angry. Next to him: EDINA MONSOON, draped in furs, smoking, making notes with a gold pen.

HILL: Gentlemen, we have a catastrophic business problem. Fifty percent of the American population refuses to buy our product. Women! And why? Because some Victorian prudes decided ladies don’t smoke. It’s a social taboo costing us forty-seven million dollars annually.

PATSY: (Lighting another cigarette with the butt of her previous one) Darling, have we tried just… making the cigarettes smaller? Pink packaging? Call them Lady Sticks?

HILL: We are NOT making pink cigarettes! We need to destroy the taboo, not tiptoe around it!

EDINA: (Standing dramatically) Which is why you hired me, sweetie. I’ve studied this problem extensively whilst on a spiritual retreat in Palm Springs—well, it was technically a Vicodin retreat, but same difference. The issue isn’t the product. The product is divine. The issue is psychological association. Currently, woman smoking equals moral degradation. We can’t fight this with logic, darling. The taboo is emotional.

CAPTAIN PEACOCK: (Stiffly) So what, pray tell, do you propose?

EDINA: We hijack the women’s liberation movement, sweetie! Women have the vote now. They’re feeling empowered. They want equality. They want freedom. We give them a symbol of that freedom. (Takes dramatic drag) We give them… cigarettes!

MR. HUMPHRIES: (Breathlessly) Ooh, that’s rather clever, isn’t it?

PATSY: Walk us through the execution, Eds. And make it quick, I’ve got a morphine appointment at three.

EDINA: We stage an event. A public demonstration. We recruit attractive, respectable young women—shop girls, secretaries, the aspirational middle class. We tell them they’re striking a blow for equality. We give them cigarettes. We call them “Torches of Freedom.” We arrange for photographers. The press covers it as feminist protest. Next day, smoking stops being taboo and becomes political statement. Boom. Sales double.

CAPTAIN PEACOCK: But that’s manipulation!

EDINA: That’s PR, darling. I prefer “engineering of consent.” My uncle Sigmund taught me—actually, he’s my uncle twice over, it’s very continental, very Freudian, very complex—anyway, sweetie, he taught me that women subconsciously see cigarettes as phallic symbols. Male power. When a woman smokes, she’s challenging male dominance. If we frame smoking as feminist rebellion, we tap into that desire for power. It’s psychology, darling!

MR. HUMPHRIES: (Fanning himself) This is all very thrilling!

HILL: Walk us through execution.

EDINA: Easter Sunday. Fifth Avenue. Maximum visibility. I recruit ten gorgeous young things—attractive but not threatening, sweetie. I script their lines. I position photographers. I brief the press. The women light cigarettes. Cameras capture it. Story runs in every newspaper in America: “Women Demand Equality, Challenge Taboo.” (Flourishing her cigarette) The taboo collapses. Women across the country think, “If those respectable women can smoke, so can I.” They buy Lucky Strikes. Your sales double within eighteen months. Champagne all round!

PATSY: What if the women refuse? What if they realise they’re being used?

EDINA: They won’t, sweetie, because I’ll select women who already feel constrained. I’ll offer them a chance to be heroes. People don’t resist narratives where they’re heroes. It’s basic Jungian archetypal psychology. I read about it in a magazine. Well, I read the headline.

HILL: What’s this going to cost?

EDINA: Thirty-five thousand dollars. Twenty-five for my fee—I’ve got a lifestyle to maintain, darling, the furs alone—and ten for execution.

CAPTAIN PEACOCK: (Scandalised) Thirty-five thousand dollars to get women to smoke?

EDINA: Thirty-five thousand to add twenty-three million female customers to your market, sweetie. I would call that a bargain. Now, shall we discuss my retainer? I’m thinking monthly payments, offshore account, and a company car. Nothing flashy, just a Bentley.

MR. HUMPHRIES: What do the women get? The girls holding the cigarettes?

EDINA: (Blankly) What do you mean?

MR. HUMPHRIES: Their cut? Payment?

EDINA: (Laughing) Sweetie, they don’t get paid! They’re volunteers! Activists! True believers! Payment would ruin the authenticity. No, these women will work for free and thank me for the opportunity. It’s the gift of being part of history, darling. Can’t put a price on that. Well, I can. I just did. Thirty-five thousand. But they can’t.

PATSY: (Grinning) You magnificent bitch.

EDINA: I prefer “pioneering public relations professional,” but I’ll take it. Now, the women need to be pretty—not too pretty, threatening pretty, but aspirational pretty. The sort of girl who makes other women think, “That could be me if I just bought the right things.” Which, incidentally, is also the key to my entire philosophy of—

HILL: What if someone exposes this? What if a reporter discovers it was staged?

EDINA: Darling, by the time anyone asks questions, the taboo will be broken. You can’t put the smoke back in the cigarette. Once those photographs are published, once women across America start smoking, the origin story becomes irrelevant. All that matters is that it happened. That’s the beauty of PR, sweetie—you create the reality, then everyone forgets it was created.

CAPTAIN PEACOCK: This feels… unethical.

EDINA: (Pouring champagne) Ethics is for people who don’t have shareholders, darling. You hired me to solve a problem. Would you prefer I be ethical or effective? (Pause) Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical. I’m fabulous either way. Now, shall we toast to manufactured desire and the commodification of liberation? Cheers, sweeties!

*****

On the morning of March 31^st, 1929, Bertha Hunt woke at six o’clock terrified. Today was the day. The day she would make history.

She took the subway into Manhattan. At 10:43, she arrived at the meeting point. The other women were already there. All young, all respectable, all nervous.

Bernays’s assistant reviewed the plan. “When I give the signal, you light the cigarette. When the reporter asks what you’re doing, Miss Hunt responds with the line. Everyone clear?”

Margaret raised her hand. “What happens afterwards?”

“Afterwards, you go home. The photographs will be in tomorrow’s papers. You will have done something meaningful.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Simplicity is power.”

At 11:02 AM, Mass ended. The assistant handed Bertha a pack of Lucky Strikes.

“Now.”

Bertha struck the match and stepped into a trap she would never escape.

*****

The tragedy of Bertha Hunt is not that she was manipulated. The tragedy is that she never knew she was manipulated.

She carried that photograph in her purse for the rest of her life. “That was me. I struck a blow for equality.”

When the cough started in 1940, she ignored it. When the blood appeared in 1953, she finally saw a doctor.

She died three years later. In the final hours, delirious with morphine, she whispered: “I lit the torch.”

She believed, until her heart stopped, that she had been a revolutionary.

She never knew she had been a billboard.

*****

We tell ourselves we are immune to this. We look back at 1929 and think: how naive. We are much too clever now.

But look at your desk. Is there a green mermaid on your coffee cup?

Marcus Garvey, twenty-eight, stood in the Starbucks queue at 8:47 AM and made his calculation. The independent café was closer, sold excellent coffee for £2.80. Starbucks was £4.80.

He chose Starbucks. He always did.

Not because the coffee was better. Because of the Zoom call at 9:30 AM. If he angled the camera correctly, they would see: Marcus, sharp blazer, professional background, and there—just visible in frame—a Starbucks cup.

The cup was a signal. It said: I am busy. Important. Urban. Global. The cup cost £4.80. The signal was priceless.

He collected his order and walked home. Set up his laptop. Positioned the camera. Perfect. The logo glowed green like a tiny beacon of legitimacy.

The call ended. The coffee was still three-quarters full. He never finished them.

He threw it away and felt, briefly, like a human billboard who had paid for the privilege of advertising.

Then his phone buzzed. Slack notification. The feeling vanished. Work required him.

He was Marcus Garvey, holder of a premium coffee cup, citizen of the global professional class.

He was not manipulated. He was making choices. Completely free choices.

Just like Bertha Hunt.

*****

Edward Bernays was Sigmund Freud’s nephew—twice over. His mother was Freud’s sister. His father was the brother of Freud’s wife. The Freudian method was embedded in his bloodline.

Freud had discovered that humans are not rational creatures. We are driven by subconscious desires—sex, death, power, belonging. We construct elaborate rationalisations for decisions made in the dark basement of the psyche.

Bernays looked at this and thought: if humans are irrational, you cannot sell to the rational mind.

The rational mind says: “I already have a coat.”

But the irrational mind says: “I am lonely. I am afraid of death. I want to matter.”

Link a product to those needs, and you can sell anything.

For the Torches of Freedom campaign, Bernays consulted Dr. A.A. Brill, one of Freud’s disciples. Brill told him that for women, the cigarette represented phallic power. By smoking it, a woman was subconsciously challenging male dominance.

Bernays weaponised this insight. He did not sell tobacco. He sold liberation.

This is the uncomfortable truth: most of the things you want, you do not actually want. You have been trained to want them.

*****

Thomas Blackwell had been a blacksmith for thirty-four years, and he could tell you the personality of iron just by the sound it made on the anvil.

It was 1903. His shop in Nottingham was small but his. Four walls, a forge, an anvil, tools inherited from his father.

This morning, a farmer had brought in a broken cart axle. Tricky work. Thomas heated the iron until it glowed orange. Pulled it out. Placed it on the anvil. Brought the hammer down.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

The rhythm was hypnotic. This was not factory work. This was craft. Every piece carried his mark, his judgement, his skill.

A merchant from London entered—rude, demanding. “I need these railings by next week.”

Thomas looked at the design. Complex scrollwork. Forty hours of work.

“That will take three weeks,” Thomas said.

“I’m paying you! Work faster.”

Thomas set down his hammer. Looked the man in the eye.

“Then find another blacksmith. I don’t work faster. I work correctly. If you want it rushed, take it to Johnson. He’ll botch it in a week and charge you half. If you want it done properly, you’ll wait three weeks and pay my rate.”

The merchant’s face went red. “Do you know who I am?”

“I don’t care who you are. This is my shop. Those are my terms.”

The merchant stormed out.

Thomas returned to his anvil. He did not worry. There was always more work. He had a skill that could not be easily replaced. He had autonomy. He had pride.

When he finished the axle at midday, he hung it to cool. Looked at it with satisfaction. The weld was clean. The metal was true. It would last twenty years.

His identity was externalised in the world, in the objects he created, in the work of his hands.

He was not free from hardship. But he was free from something worse: the feeling that his life was owned by someone else.

*****

This was the Great Regression. We stopped making things and started processing things. And when you stop making things, you lose a critical piece of your identity.

To fill the void, we invented Consumer’s Pride.

We started defining ourselves not by what we created but by what we consumed.

“I’m a Ford man.” “I’m an Apple person.” “I’m a Starbucks regular.”

To define yourself by a corporation that views you as a wallet with a pulse is a form of spiritual suicide.

But we do it because the alternative—the silence, the void, the question “Who am I when I am not buying?”—is too terrifying to face.

*****

THE INDIVIDUALITY™ APP LAUNCH KEYNOTE, 2024

A stage in Shoreditch, exposed red brick, Edison bulbs. Audience of INVESTORS and JOURNALISTS. JAY and WILL stand centre, both in black turtlenecks. Screen behind them: “INDIVIDUALITY™: BE YOURSELF. ALGORITHMICALLY.”

JAY: Cheers for coming, yeah? I’m Jay, this is Will. Right, so basically, two years ago, me and Will were at this amazing party in Ibiza—proper VIP, you wouldn’t have got in—and we thought: Why is being yourself so hard? Like, it’s mental. And we’re both quite philosophical about these things, so we decided to, like, fix it.

WILL: Indeed. What Jay’s articulating, albeit somewhat crudely, is that modern existential anxiety stems from the burden of self-determination. Kierkegaard wrote extensively about this—though obviously we’ve synthesised his work into something more commercially viable.

JAY: Yeah, exactly what I was gonna say. So we built Individuality™. Basically, it uses AI and loads of clever algorithms—I coded most of it myself, I’m basically a genius at coding—to tell you who you are. Like, proper scientifically.

COMPO: (Old journalist in cloth cap, suspicious) Hang on. You’re telling people who they are?

WILL: We’re facilitating self-discovery through data analytics. There’s a meaningful distinction. You see, most people don’t actually know themselves. They’re performing identities absorbed from culture. We cut through the performative aspect using empirical methodologies. Data doesn’t lie.

JAY: We analyse everything, yeah? Your purchases, your Spotify, your browser history—actually, especially your browser history, that’s where the proper insights are. I’ve seen some things, mate. Anyway, then we generate your Authentic Self Profile. It’s like astrology but real. And more expensive.

FLEABAG: (Young journalist, knowing smile) Let me guess. Then you sell them things based on this “authentic” profile?

JAY: (Defensive) No! Well, yes. But it’s not selling, it’s curating. Like, if the algorithm determines you’re, I dunno, 73% Creative and 89% Environmentally Conscious, we connect you with brands that match those values. It’s helping people be themselves through strategic purchasing decisions.

WILL: We currently have over 600 brand partnerships. When a user is identified as a specific archetype—say, The Thoughtful Creator—we introduce them to products within that ecosystem. It’s symbiotic. The user achieves authenticity, the brands acquire qualified consumers, and we receive a modest 15% commission per transaction.

COMPO: You get paid when they buy things?

JAY: We get paid when people express their true selves through commerce! Totally different! Look, I’ve already made, like, forty grand from this, so clearly it works. Actually, it’s probably more like sixty. Seventy, maybe. Six figures, basically.

WILL: (Irritated) Jay, we agreed not to discuss specific revenue figures publicly—

JAY: Whatever, Will. Anyway, best bit: we’ve got this feature called Authenticity Check. Pings you throughout the day. “Are you being authentic right now?” “Does your current location align with your values?” It’s brilliant. Keeps you accountable to your data.

FLEABAG: That sounds like surveillance dressed up as self-help.

WILL: That sounds like self-actualisation facilitated by technological intervention! Look, we live in a society where people constantly perform fake versions of themselves. Individuality™ provides consistency. You get to be your authentic self—as determined by our proprietary algorithm trained on billions of data points—all the time, without deviation.

COMPO: And if someone doesn’t like what the algorithm says they are?

JAY: Then they’ve got Authenticity Resistance, which is, like, a real psychological thing we didn’t just make up. But most people come around within three weeks. They’re like, “Oh yeah, the algorithm knows me better than I know myself.” Which it does. Obviously.

WILL: We offer in-app therapy for resistant users. Behavioural coaching. Gradual exposure to one’s data-verified identity. The resistance typically resolves once users accept that subjective self-image is inherently unreliable whereas algorithmic assessment is empirically grounded.

FLEABAG: You’re telling people their own feelings about themselves are wrong?

JAY: Not wrong. Just, like, not backed by data. Your feelings are probably rubbish, to be honest. No offence. But the algorithm? The algorithm is never wrong. I coded it myself. Well, me and Will. Mostly me.

WILL: (Through gritted teeth) It was an equal partnership, Jay.

COMPO: How much does this cost?

JAY: Basic profile is free. But if you want the proper good stuff—Advanced Authenticity Insights, real-time identity coaching, access to our Authenticity Maximisation Programme—that’s £19.99 a month. Premium’s £49.99. Premium gets you AI-generated morning routines, conversation starters for dates, and this mental feature called Authentic Sleeping Patterns where we tell you how to sleep in a way that’s true to yourself.

FLEABAG: You’ve monetised every aspect of existence and called it authenticity.

JAY: (Proudly) Yeah! Sick, innit?

WILL: Our five-year vision is total authenticity infrastructure. Every purchase, every conversation, every decision—verified and optimised by Individuality™. We want to make inauthenticity obsolete. A world where everyone knows exactly who they are and never deviates.

COMPO: (Standing up) That’s not a world, son. That’s a bloody prison.

JAY: That’s only a prison if you value chaos over clarity, mate. Which is a bit weird, to be honest. Most people want to know who they are. We’re just charging them nineteen quid a month to find out.

WILL: Plus VAT.

JAY: Plus VAT, yeah. Any other questions? No? Wicked. (To investors) Right, who wants to give us money? We’re seeking eight million at a forty-million valuation. I’ve already got verbal commitments from, like, loads of VCs. Proper big names. You probably wouldn’t know them, they’re quite exclusive.

FLEABAG: (To audience, breaking fourth wall) And that’s how individuality died. Not with a bang. With a subscription service and a terms-of-conditions nobody reads.

*****

The algorithm is not smarter than Bernays. It is just faster.

In 2012, the American retailer Target developed a pregnancy prediction model. The algorithm analysed purchasing patterns—unscented lotion, magnesium supplements—and could predict pregnancy before customers knew themselves.

A teenager in Minnesota bought these items. The algorithm flagged her as pregnant. Target sent her coupons for cribs. Her father found them, furious. He called the store to complain.

A week later, he called back to apologise. His daughter had been pregnant. She had not told him yet.

The machine knew before the family knew.

Your phone listens. Your browser watches. Your purchasing history is a window into your psychology deeper than most therapy sessions.

Companies know you are depressed before you do—Google searches for “insomnia,” “can’t concentrate,” “what’s the point” trigger targeted ads for therapy apps and antidepressants. They know you are considering leaving your partner—searches for “couples therapy,” followed by dating app downloads six weeks later. They know you are job hunting—LinkedIn profile views spike, CV template downloads, professional clothing purchases.

The algorithm does not judge. It does not care. It simply watches, learns, predicts, and profits.

But it does not just predict your behaviour. It shapes it.

YouTube’s recommendation algorithm does not show you videos you would have watched anyway. It shows you videos that maximise watch time. It learns what keeps your attention and feeds you more, subtly shifting your interests, your beliefs, your identity towards whatever keeps you clicking.

TikTok is even more sophisticated. The algorithm tracks not just what you watch but how long, whether you rewatch, micro-expressions of pleasure or disgust. It builds a model of you more detailed than you could articulate yourself.

Then it feeds you content designed not to match who you are, but to shape who you become. The algorithm wants you predictable. Predictable users are profitable. Chaos is expensive. Consistency is cheap.

You think you are scrolling TikTok. But TikTok is scrolling you—scanning, analysing, categorising, training you like Pavlov’s dog to salivate at the notification chime.

*****

There is a scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where Brian shouts to a crowd: “You are all individuals!”

“Yes, we are all individuals!” they chant back in perfect unison.

“You have to think for yourselves!”

“Yes, we have to think for ourselves!” they repeat, synchronised, identical.

One small voice at the back: “I’m not.”

That is us. We are the crowd, chanting about our individuality whilst wearing the same trainers, drinking the same coffee, watching the same shows recommended by the same algorithm, expressing our unique perspectives in 280 characters workshopped to maximise engagement.

We are walking around in the costumes of individuality, but we all bought them at the same shop.

*****

An individual is not someone who buys “alternative” products. An individual is not someone who joins a subculture, dyes their hair, gets a tattoo.

An individual is someone who can sit in a room, alone, without a phone, without a purchase, without a brand, without an audience, and be content.

Can you do that?

Try it. Right now. Put the phone down. Turn off the screen. Sit in silence for five minutes.

Who are you when you are not buying? Who are you when you are not scrolling? Who are you when you are not performing for an algorithm that measures your worth in engagement metrics?

Most people cannot answer that question. Because most people do not know.

We have outsourced our identities to corporations. We have let them tell us who to be. And in exchange, they have given us the comfort of never having to ask the question ourselves.

*****

Edward Bernays died in 1995, aged 103. He lived long enough to see his techniques perfected beyond his wildest imagination.

In his later years, he expressed some regret. When he learned that Goebbels had used his book Crystallising Public Opinion to design the Nazi propaganda machine, Bernays was reportedly shocked. He was Jewish. The idea that his methods had been weaponised for genocide horrified him.

But he should not have been surprised. He had built the gun. He had published the instruction manual. The Nazis simply took his tools and applied them with ruthless efficiency.

The same tools now run the global economy. Every advertisement. Every social media platform. Every brand partnership. Every influencer promoting products they do not use to audiences desperate to be told who to be.

Bernays weaponised Freud. Silicon Valley weaponised Bernays. And we carry the weapons in our pockets, checking them every three minutes, waiting for validation, waiting to be told what to want next.

*****

So what do we do?

Drop the match.

Stop believing that identity is something you purchase. Stop believing that freedom is something you consume. Stop believing that you are your Spotify Wrapped, your coffee order, your Instagram aesthetic, your TikTok For You Page.

Sit in the silence. Ask the uncomfortable question: Who am I when I am not buying? Who am I when I am not scrolling? Who am I when no algorithm is watching, no corporation is measuring, no brand is validating?

The answer might be terrifying. It might be empty. You might discover that underneath the purchases and performances, there is nothing—just a void shaped like a consumer, waiting to be told what to want next.

But if you find that void, you have found the starting point. Because authentic individuality is not built on consumption. It is built on creation. On craft. On making something that did not exist before, something that bears your mark, your judgement, your specific human weirdness that no algorithm can predict.

Thomas the blacksmith in 1903 was an individual. Not because he bought the right brands. But because when he looked at a finished axle, he could say: I made this. That is me.

We do not make things anymore. We scroll, swipe, purchase, consume. We are a nation of curators assembling identities from pre-fabricated parts mass-produced in factories we will never see.

And we call this freedom.

*****

Bertha Hunt believed she was lighting a Torch of Freedom. She died believing it. The torch was real. The freedom was not.

You are holding a torch right now. It is glowing in your hand, showing you exactly what you want to see, feeding you exactly what you have been trained to desire, telling you exactly who you are supposed to be.

But it is not your torch. You did not light it. Someone else struck that match, positioned the photographers, wrote your lines, and handed you the script.

The question is: will you keep holding it? Or will you drop the match and sit in the dark long enough to remember that you are more than what you buy, more than what you scroll, more than what the algorithm predicts?

Individuality is not curated. It is not optimised. It is not data-verified. It is messy, contradictory, inefficient, and unprofitable.

Which is exactly why it is dangerous. Which is exactly why it matters. Which is exactly why they want to sell it back to you as a product you can purchase, one authenticity subscription at a time.

The torch is still burning. And the question remains:

Are we individuals? Or are we just very convincing consumers?