New Wallpaper

You’re streaming your whole elaborate life to strangers on Snapchat, Periscope, Instagram—people who don’t know you and are mostly just hoping you’ll embarrass yourself so they have something to laugh about. But you feel superior for being there. Ahead. Not like the older people still stuck on whatever came before.

Then someone younger moves, and you’re the one left behind.

The platforms don’t actually care about your loyalty. The only thing that matters to them is extraction—data, attention, whatever they can sell. Once that equation stops working, the smart people are already gone. Trendsetters jump platforms the second they notice the losers showing up, because that’s when the cool drains out.

This happens in exactly the same way every time. Someone finds a new app, it feels pure and undiscovered, it gets big, you realize you’re part of a crowd performing for metrics, you leave. Same cycle, different name.

Houseparty was the latest version—supposed to be just friends hanging out on video, a digital room without the performance machinery. Made by the Meerkat people. And it did have that thing where it felt intimate for a minute, before the inevitable happened and it became another platform, another performance space. Which, honestly, was always going to happen.

I’ve been through enough of these to see it’s not about finding the right app. It’s just the same game on repeat. The treadmill never stops, it just gets new wallpaper.