{"id":9141,"date":"2026-06-05T09:04:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/?p=9141"},"modified":"2026-06-05T09:11:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:11:49","slug":"the-curated-self-in-the-age-of-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/the-curated-self-in-the-age-of-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"The Curated Self in the Age of Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In\u00a0The Book of Disquiet<\/em>, Fernando Pessoa says that we are all curated selves. He wrote this in 1913. He says that we (or he) are curated artifacts – false selves – intentionally formed into a version of a person in the bodies and souls we’ve been placed in by destiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Pessoa says has probably always been true. Even before social media, people likely curated themselves into versions of how they wanted to be and appear to the world. We’ve always had aspirations, ambitions, goals, and desires. We dress in certain ways, pursue certain goals, and desire certain things in life that curate us into different personas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With social media, this curation of the self may have become more widespread, since aesthetics<\/em> are easily accessible through platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest. The variety and diversity of curated selves might even have become more gentrified and unified due to algorithms perpetuating already popular images of desirable selves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that, because of social media, we now all desire the same interior design pieces, the same Pilates workout clothes, and read the same TikTok books. This creates copies of the same curated selves all around the world. A 27-year-old woman in Sweden might dress, act, have the same design furniture, and read the same books as someone in China or Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a pretty cool phenomenon. But, I can\u2019t help but wonder if it makes us less authentic and who\u2019s holding the power of who we become?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa says that we are all curated selves. He wrote this in 1913. He says that we (or he) are curated artifacts – false selves – intentionally formed into a version of a person in the bodies and souls we’ve been placed in by destiny. What Pessoa says has probably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[155,218,840,471],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literature","category-personal-development","category-social-media","category-thoughts-en","entry","has-media"],"gutentor_comment":0,"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_0486-scaled.jpeg",2560,1920,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_0486-150x150.jpeg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_0486-300x225.jpeg",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_0486-768x576.jpeg",768,576,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_0486-1024x768.jpeg",1024,768,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_0486-1536x1152.jpeg",1536,1152,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_0486-2048x1536.jpeg",2048,1536,true],"ocean-thumb-m":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_0486-600x600.jpeg",600,600,true],"ocean-thumb-ml":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_0486-800x450.jpeg",800,450,true],"ocean-thumb-l":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_0486-1200x700.jpeg",1200,700,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Wendy Zhou","author_link":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/author\/wendy1111live-se\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"In\u00a0The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa says that we are all curated selves. He wrote this in 1913. He says that we (or he) are curated artifacts – false selves – intentionally formed into a version of a person in the bodies and souls we’ve been placed in by destiny. What Pessoa says has probably…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9144,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9141\/revisions\/9144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}