Hell is Other People's Feeds
Jean-Paul Sartre's famous line 'Hell is other people' from No Exit captures the torment of being perpetually objectified by the gaze of the Other. In the digital arena, this gaze is multiplied, mediated, and permanent. Every post, comment, or like is performed under the potential gaze of hundreds or thousands of 'Others'—peers, family, strangers, and algorithms. This creates a panopticon effect, where we internalize the gaze and begin to police ourselves. We craft our digital persona not from inner conviction, but from anticipation of how it will be received. This is the essence of inauthenticity in Sartrean terms: living as an object-for-others rather than a subject-for-itself. The social media profile becomes a prison of our own making, built from the bricks of imagined judgment.
Shame and the Digital Look
Sartre describes 'the look' as the moment when I realize I am an object in the world of another free consciousness. This is often accompanied by shame (e.g., being caught peeping through a keyhole). Digital life is a continuous, low-intensity experience of 'the look.' The metrics—likes, views, shares—are a quantified manifestation of this gaze. A post with few likes can induce a specific digital shame, a feeling of being negatively objectified as unpopular or irrelevant. Conversely, a viral post can trigger an anxious alienation, as one's identity is suddenly defined by a vast, anonymous audience. The constant availability of this feedback loop keeps us in a state of neurotic self-objectification, hindering the spontaneous, non-instrumental being that is key to authenticity.
- The Third-Party Gaze: Beyond human peers, we are watched by corporate and governmental algorithms, a non-human 'Other' that categorizes and commodifies our being.
- Bad Faith in Curation: Selecting only 'highlight reel' moments is an act of bad faith, denying the full, ambiguous reality of our lives.
- The Archive of Shame: Past posts constitute a permanent, searchable record that can trigger shame years later, fossilizing a former self.
Strategies for Existential Evasion
How does one evade this panopticon? Complete withdrawal is one option, but Sartre would likely see it as another form of bad faith—a denial of our inescapably social nature. A more authentic approach is to engage while consciously rejecting the internalized gaze. This could involve: 1) Posting for the Self: Sharing content that is meaningful to you, regardless of its perceived popularity. 2) Embracing Ambiguity: Posting about failures, doubts, and mundane moments, resisting the pressure to curate a perfect self. 3) Opacity as Resistance: Using privacy settings not to hide, but to create a bounded space for more authentic, less performative interaction. The goal is to use the platform while sabotaging its core logic of performance and surveillance, to be a subject acting within the panopticon, not just an object produced by it.
The gaze of social media is a powerful engine of inauthenticity. To reclaim our freedom, we must first recognize how deeply we have internalized this digital panopticon. We must confront the shame and anxiety it produces not as personal failings, but as systemic effects. From this lucid recognition, a revolt is possible. We can choose to post, share, and connect in ways that affirm our subjectivity—our messy, free, and undefined being. We can use the tools of surveillance against themselves, building genuine communities within their walls. In the end, the challenge is to remember that behind every profile is a free consciousness, and that our ultimate project is not to manage an object (the profile) but to live as a subject, even under the digital gaze.