Being a content creator, it is my ritual to start my day with a post. That is exactly what I did. Same face. Same angle. Same vague caption that pretends to mean something while being nothing.

Results: five likes.

I felt my heart drop to my stomach. After refreshing, still five. I told myself it was early. The algorithm probably wasn’t a morning person today. Or maybe it hadn’t had its coffee yet. Nor had I, but we ball.

I went to do my makeup with my phone propped against the sink; normal behaviour, right? Halfway through blending my foundation, I noticed my face had turned red before the blush even touched my cheeks. Not a cute blush red, more of a “something is profoundly wrong” flushed red. I hyperventilated a bit while telling myself, “It’s okay, it’s still early.”

I posted again. A story. A safe, mundane picture of my breakfast arranged in a neat, Instagramesque manner. But it was futile. It seemed like I was being hard-launched towards the void known as irrelevance.

By mid-morning, I was refreshing my phone like it was a full-time job, ignoring my actual full-time job. Refresh after refresh after refresh, but the numbers stayed the same. My insights stayed flat. Not even a dramatic downward fall, just flat. Like I was forgotten.

By noon, I tried being ironic with a dash of self-awareness. “Falling off era.” Very self-aware. Very brave. Zero engagement. I had lost my aura, publicly.

So I spiralled further.

I posted at weird times, posted too much, and filmed the mundane as it was. I went live and reorganised a drawer. People joined. Confused, but seated.

I shared too much, concerningly so. It wasn’t deep, just unnecessary. Engagement ticked up. My mind told me: okay, so this is what we are doing now.

I couldn’t concentrate on work, so I took the rest of the day off. No one at work cared either. I guess it just sucked to be me that day. I went home and changed my outfit three times. I dyed a random patch of my hair a vibrant pink because someone commented, “Do something bold.”

Every post gave me crumbs. Tiny crumbs, but crumbs nonetheless. And I kept asking for more, like Oliver Twist begging for another bowl of watered-down soup.

By evening, I was snapping at everyone, my parents, my friends, even my cat. I didn’t know who to blame, what to do, or how to behave. Silence felt violent. Every quiet moment felt like proof that I was being phased out.

I needed something bigger. Something irreversible. Something I couldn’t delete once the engagement wore off.

So I set up my phone, checking the angle and the lighting. I took a glance at myself, as though it were a theatre performance or a scream waiting to be heard.

Then I stooped to the lowest of the low. I shaved my head live on social media.

No speech. No words. Just silence. My hair fell in clumps while the numbers rose in bunches.

The likes jumped. The comments flooded in. My phone lagged from all the concerned texts asking me if I was okay, praising me for my bravery, laughing at me, laughing for me.

At the end, I was lying on the floor, bald and drained of any energy. But my phone kept buzzing. The internet loved me again.

All this happened within the span of a day, a single day that turned my life upside down.

I was exhausted, unhinged, and absolutely not okay.

But I smiled. Because I am full of “main character energy,” and so are my contemporaries, which psychologists term obsessive-compulsive narcissism.