Is anyone else just tired of it all?

2020 was a difficult year for everyone, what with the global pandemic and everything that followed. Meanwhile, on social media everyone was losing their minds for a different reason: The need to be productive. The world had come to a creaking halt, people felt restless and unfulfilled, and many were trapped inside and unable to go to work. Instead of sitting in their own misery, people got up. There was a decision made that if you couldn’t go to work or school, you had to be productive in other ways.

With aesthetics like “it girl” and “clean girl” on the rise, influencers were scrambling to put on their athleisure and vlog themselves on a Hot Girl Walk. For anyone who doesn’t remember, that’s when you go for a walk, except you’re only allowed to think about four things: What you’re grateful for, what your goals are, how you’re going to achieve said goals, and then, of course, how hot you are.

Bullet journals flew off the shelves as people began to write and plan. Recipes for fast, healthy lunches and discussion of which green juice or ginger shot brand was best were shared across social media. Minimalism was embraced, filling your “For You Page” with videos of muscular but skinny white women in white leggings making their uniformly spartan beds in the morning. The craze around skincare also bloomed into mainstream media in 2020. There was a push to be healthier people, physically and mentally.

But, if you weren’t improving, you were failing. You were supposed to make use of this time trapped at home. Beyond that, you had to have the correct equipment to fit in with everyone else, to be buying the right brands of clothing and types of food. Only then would you be curating your life to maximize your happiness. I mean, look at the influencers — don’t their lives seem perfect?

I hated it all. My entire life I’d been told that social media was fake, that the slices of life influencers shared with the world were just that: Curated excerpts from a more natural life (hidden are their messy kitchens and sleeping in until 11). However, that facade became much harder to believe when we began seeing people vlogging their entire days. Everyone seemed to be morphing into this same archetype. My friends and I decided to compensate in the opposite direction. We’d spend our days sleeping until three, staying up until two, dressing in all black and dying our hair and whispering scathing remarks about all of the fakers online. This was not a healthy response, and I recognize that now. However, it appears that I might have just been ahead of the trend.

Slowly, we’re beginning to reach an equilibrium.

A few months ago “Rat Girl Summer” was a main aesthetic, which is perhaps the most glaring show of how our perspective of worth has changed in the past year. Many will be familiar with what normally monopolizes that season: “Hot Girl Summer.” But no longer is it our goal to be sexy and untouchable, with a perfect tan and bikini body. Instead, a shift demonstrates a newfound appreciation for a simpler, more natural day-to-day. One TikTok creator described the rat girl agenda this way: “She’s partying; she’s eating whatever she wants; she’s scurrying around; and she’s not apologizing.” What it really boiled down to was leaving the house, having fun, and existing as a person surrounded by other people. Still, there was a flawlessly marketed vibe to this trend.

Consumerism is ingrained into our capitalistic society, but it has reached a recent high. With the creation of the TikTok shop and Elon Musk’s intention to do the same, people are also beginning to grow tired with the trend branding that has become so commonplace. A lot of this came to light with the Blueberry Nail trend, as creators lept into tired rage at this baby blue manicure name, finally realizing the common marketing trick of renaming something old as a way to claim it’s new. Blueberry Milk nails aren’t the only time this has been done.

Whew. The trend cycle is spinning at an impossibly fast pace: Tomato girls? Latte makeup? Cherry-cola hair? Listen, trends are simple, they’re cute, and they can create a community to be a part of. But the dual ridiculousness of the phenomenon is finally catching attention. As a TikToker named Caitlyn explains, “People don’t like that their illusion of choice is shattering, or being confronted with the reality that everything is being sold to you in some way or another.”

As the harmful effects of social media on the world have become more studied and known, many have begun to leave the internet, or interact with it in a different way. Slow living is becoming more and more popular, but will we ever be able to leave the internet entirely? And what would that leave us with, in a world where the most complex bonds many have is with people they met online?

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Elliot Carrick is a senior at Saranac Lake High School. Her writing has appeared in “Wild Words: Teen Writing Anthology,” PoemVillage and Teens Speak.