The Selfie War

Broly posted pictures on Instagram. Guns, cash, women, phones—all the usual stuff, but documented like a lifestyle. Selfies from inside something brutal, filtered and framed like it meant something.

The thing that got me was how normal it looked. Instagram has this way of flattening everything into the same visual language. A guy with a cartel and a phone was just another person performing his life for strangers. The violence wasn’t the point anymore—the audience was. He wanted the likes, the comments, the feeling of existing in front of people. Most of us just hide better.

There’s something deeply unsettling about watching someone document a reality you know ends badly, framed like a vacation. The distance between the gun and the filter. Between what’s actually happening and what you’re willing to see. Social media lets you pretend it’s all the same thing.

I don’t know what happened to him. Probably nothing good. But by then everyone had already moved on to the next viral thing, the next person performing their worst or best self into the void, all of it looking exactly the same on the feed.