There’s a specific flavor of ‘messy, real, unfiltered’ content taking over every feed right now — the kind where someone films their dirty dishes, cries about burnout, then drops a discount code. It’s manufactured chaos dressed up as authenticity, and I’m not doing it. Here’s what it actually looks like and why it works (on purpose).

Okay, so I am going to say something that might make a few people uncomfortable, and I’m fine with that.

There is a trend flooding every corner of the internet right now that is being sold to you as ‘real’ and ‘raw’ and ‘unfiltered’ — and it is the single most calculated, produced, committee-approved piece of content strategy I have ever seen in eighteen years of doing this. It makes the old perfectly-staged flat-lay look like journalism by comparison.

I don’t know what to call it exactly, so I’ve been calling it Performed Chaos. And we need to talk about it.

What does ‘Performed Chaos’ actually look like?

You know it when you see it. Someone films themselves looking exhausted — hair undone, mascara slightly wrong, sitting in a car or on a bathroom floor. They start talking in a kind of halting, vulnerable way about how hard things have been lately. Maybe there are dishes in the background. Maybe they cry, just a little. Just enough.

Then, about forty-five seconds in, they pivot. Discount code. Product link. Limited time offer.

The mess was the setup. The breakdown was the funnel.

Why is this worse than the old influencer fakery?

The old fake was easy to spot — everyone knew a ring light and a color-coordinated pantry wasn’t real life. We all understood the game. It was aspirational fiction and both sides knew it.

This is different. This borrows the visual language of actual vulnerability — the shaky voice, the unmade bed, the ‘I almost didn’t post this’ caption — and uses it to sell something. It’s not just dishonest. It’s specifically designed to disarm the part of your brain that would normally be skeptical.

Research on parasocial relationships has been showing for years that people extend genuine trust and empathy to creators they feel they ‘know.’ Performed Chaos weaponizes that trust directly. That’s the part that bothers me.

Is it possible some of it is actually real?

Sure. That’s the maddening part — some of it probably is. Some people are genuinely burnt out, genuinely sitting on a bathroom floor, and they happen to also have a brand deal to fulfill that week. I’m not saying every person doing this is a cynical operator.

But when the format is this consistent — the undone hair, the paused exhale, the pivot to the product, the comment section full of ‘thank you for being so real’ — at some point the pattern IS the product. It doesn’t matter if the individual feeling was genuine. The performance of it was engineered.

The ‘I almost didn’t post this’ caption deserves its own sentence

‘I almost didn’t post this’ is the ‘no offense but’ of content creation. It’s a disclaimer that means the opposite of what it says. Nobody who almost didn’t post something posts it with a full brand partnership tag, three hashtags, and a link in bio.

I’m not saying this to be mean. I’m saying it because once you see it, you can’t unsee it — and I think it’s worth being honest about.

The strongest argument FOR this kind of content

Here’s where I’m going to steel-man it, because it deserves that.

The people who create this content would say — and some of them have said — that showing messy reality alongside a product recommendation is MORE honest than showing a perfect kitchen with a seamless ad drop. That the rawness is actually the context, not the manipulation. That showing you’re a real person who has hard days AND uses a particular protein powder is just… life.

I can see that. I don’t think it’s nothing.

But I think there’s a difference between ‘here’s my real life and also I’m going to tell you about a thing I use’ and spending forty minutes crafting a video designed to look like it took ten seconds. The craft isn’t the problem — hiding the craft while selling authenticity as the product is the problem.

Why I’m not doing it

I’ve been at this since 2006. Long enough to have watched a lot of trends roll through — and long enough to know which ones I could live with and which ones I couldn’t.

This one I can’t. Not because I think I’m above it, but because I think it makes everything worse for everyone. It makes actual vulnerable moments harder to trust. It makes it harder for creators who ARE being straight with you to get that across. It muddies the water for everyone.

I wrote a whole thing back when I got into what ‘authentic’ even means anymore that still feels relevant here — the short version is that authentic isn’t a vibe, it’s a practice. And a practice doesn’t have a discount code attached to it.

I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is just the new normal and I should loosen up. But I think my ongoing rant about content that treats you like a mark is one I’m going to keep having, because you deserve better than that — and honestly, so does the craft of this whole weird job.

Look, I’m not here to cancel anyone over their content strategy. People have bills. Brand deals are how this works. I get it.

But I do think we’re allowed to notice when something that’s being sold as ‘real’ is actually very, very produced. And we’re definitely allowed to decide we don’t want to participate in making more of it.

That’s where I’m at. Notices it, named it, opting out.

The “get ready with me while I cry” trend — where creators film themselves emotionally unraveling on camera for engagement — is something I want no part of. There’s a difference between honest storytelling and performing grief for an algorithm. I’ll tell you hard truths here, but I won’t manufacture them for views.

There’s this thing happening on social media right now and I genuinely don’t know when we all agreed to it.

Somewhere between the morning routine videos and the “what I eat in a day” content, a new format took over — and it’s the one where an influencer films themselves crying. Sometimes it’s mid-makeup. Sometimes it’s in the car. Sometimes it’s just them staring directly into the camera, lower lip going, tears falling, and a caption that says something like “being vulnerable with you guys.”

I don’t think I’m the audience for this. And honestly? I don’t think I’m the creator for it either.

What even is the “emotional vulnerability” content trend?

Filming yourself crying for social media engagement has become its own genre at this point — complete with its own aesthetic, its own lighting choices, and its own comment section full of “omg you are SO brave for sharing this.”

The videos follow a pretty reliable structure. Something hard happened, or maybe something vague and undefinable happened, or maybe nothing happened at all but the creator is feeling things. Camera goes on. Tears come. The caption is always some version of “keeping it real with you.”

Here’s what bothers me about that framing: keeping it real and filming it for an audience are two different things.

Is emotional content on social media always fake?

No — and I want to be clear about that, because this is the part people get wrong when they criticize this trend.

There’s a real and important tradition of creators being honest about hard things. I’ve written about difficult stuff on this blog since 2006 and I don’t regret a word of it. Honest storytelling — the messy, specific, uncomfortable kind — is actually one of the few things the internet does right.

But there’s a canyon-wide difference between telling a real story and turning on a camera in the middle of falling apart so you can catch it in real time for content.

One is sharing something you’ve processed. The other is monetizing the moment before you’ve had a chance to feel it.

Why I won’t be participating, ever

I don’t think performing distress is the same as being vulnerable. I really don’t.

Vulnerability — actual vulnerability — is terrifying specifically because you don’t know how it’s going to land. You write something honest and you hit publish and your stomach drops. That’s the feeling. That’s what makes it count.

When you film yourself crying and you KNOW it’s going to get 400,000 views because the algorithm rewards that exact content? That’s not vulnerability. That’s a strategy. And I’m not interested in strategies that involve using my worst moments as a hook.

I’ve been blogging long enough to know the difference between writing from a real place and writing to get a reaction. I’ve done both. Only one of them feels okay to look back on.

The argument FOR this kind of content (and why I still disagree)

Here’s the strongest case the other side makes: people feel less alone when they see someone else in pain. That’s true. Genuinely true. There’s real research on parasocial relationships showing that viewers form meaningful emotional connections with creators, and that seeing someone else struggle can reduce the stigma of struggling yourself.

I get that. I believe it.

But I’d push back on the idea that the medium and the motive don’t matter. A creator who cries on camera every single time something goes sideways — and who checks their analytics afterward to see how it performed — is not the same thing as someone who shares a hard story because it might help. Researchers studying social media and mental health have flagged the feedback loop problem: the platform rewards emotional extremity, which creates an incentive to escalate. That’s not great for the creator, and it’s not great for the people watching.

I can tell you something hard without filming myself in the middle of it. That’s what I’d rather do.

What “keeping it real” actually looks like to me

I’ve written posts on this blog that made my hands shake while I was typing them. I’ve talked about things that were uncomfortable and specific and probably made some readers uncomfortable too.

None of that required a ring light and a camera pointed at my face.

Keeping it real, to me, looks like telling the truth after I’ve had enough distance from something to actually tell it well. It looks like writing the hard post when I know the hard post is the right one, not when I know it’ll perform. It looks like trusting that a well-written, honest paragraph will hit harder than a thirty-second cry clip every single time.

Because it does. It always does.

Does refusing this trend mean I’m out of touch?

Maybe. I’m okay with that.

Influencer culture moves fast and it rewards whoever is willing to give the most — the most access, the most rawness, the most unfiltered version of themselves. I’ve watched creators give and give and give until there’s nothing left that’s actually theirs anymore.

That’s not a path I want. I started this blog because I wanted a place to actually say things, not perform saying things.

If that makes me a little old-fashioned in the content landscape, I can live with it. I’ve been doing this since 2006. I’ve watched a hundred trends come and go — and I’ve written about most of them, like back when I couldn’t stop dissecting why certain things explode online — and the only content I’m proud of is the stuff that was genuinely mine.

Crying into a camera for engagement? That one’s not gonna be mine.

I’m not trying to tell anyone else what to create. People can do what they want, and if it works for them, fine.

But if you’ve ever watched one of those videos and thought — even for half a second — “wait, does this feel a little… off?” You’re not wrong. Your instinct is good. Trust it.

There’s enough real stuff out there worth saying. We don’t need to manufacture the feeling of it.