Tension: We flatten our actual experiences into universal struggles to ensure others will recognize themselves in what we share.
Noise: Online culture rewards finding connection through sameness while punishing anything too specific or strange.
Direct Message: The drive to be relatable makes us boring, erasing the precise details that make experience meaningful.
To learn more about our editorial approach, explore The Direct Message methodology.
The language of burnout has become so standardized you could swap captions between accounts and barely notice. “Running on empty.” “Forgot to pour into my own cup.” “Learning to set boundaries.”
Relationship struggles get described through the same handful of phrases about communication and emotional labor. Anxiety gets flattened into “spiraling.” Grief becomes “processing loss.”
Every platform rewards posts that function as mirrors. The more people who can see themselves in what you share, the better it performs.
This creates intense pressure to sand down the specific texture of your experience until it’s smooth enough for mass projection.
The argument you had with your partner gets translated into generic observations about relationships. The particular way your anxiety manifests gets described using words everyone already recognizes.
We’ve built an entire culture around making everything relatable. Scroll long enough and you’ll see the same struggles described in identical language, the same insights recycled with minor variations, the same jokes retold across thousands of accounts.
Human experience has been homogenized into a set of approved phrases and frameworks, all designed to generate that crucial “this is so me” response.
But something gets lost when specificity disappears in favor of universal resonance. The details that make an experience actually yours, that reveal something precise about how you move through the world, vanish in the editing process.
What remains is so generic it could describe anyone, which means it doesn’t really describe you at all.
Why we learned to edit out what’s actually interesting
The incentive structure is straightforward. Posts that resonate widely get engagement. Content that makes people think “exactly!” spreads fast.
The algorithm favors universality. Over time, you internalize these patterns and start self-editing before you’ve even finished a thought.
Is this too specific? Will anyone else relate? Should I make this broader? The questions become automatic, filtering out anything that feels too particular or strange. A weird observation that might resonate deeply with three people gets discarded in favor of something designed to reach three hundred.
This process strips away everything interesting. Your specific fight gets generalized into “communication issues” because naming the actual dynamic feels too narrow.
The strange anxiety you felt at a party becomes generic social overwhelm because describing what actually happened might not land widely enough.
The particular shape of your grief disappears behind therapeutic language that could apply to anyone.
In my work translating psychological research into practical behavior change, I’ve watched how generic framing actually prevents understanding.
Someone will say “I need to be more consistent” rather than examining what specifically derails them. They’ll reference “self-care” without identifying what actually restores them versus what they think should restore them.
The broad language connects them to a wider conversation but disconnects them from their actual experience.
Here’s what we misunderstand: people don’t feel truly seen when you describe experience in universal terms. They feel seen when you articulate something so specific it illuminates what they thought only they experienced.
Precision creates recognition in ways generic language never can.
The feedback loop that flattens everything
Mental health struggles must use specific therapeutic vocabulary. Relationship difficulties need popular psychology frameworks. Professional frustrations should reference hustle culture and capitalism.
There’s a correct way to discuss these topics, a set of approved phrases that signal you’re part of the conversation.
Step outside those boundaries and you risk being ignored. Share something too specific and people scroll past because they can’t immediately project onto it. Use genuinely personal language and your audience might not understand what you’re talking about.
The safer approach is describing your experience with words everyone already knows, frameworks everyone already recognizes, struggles everyone already validates.
But this safety erases your actual experience. The particular way anxiety shows up for you disappears behind generic descriptions. Your specific disappointment gets buried under vague language about expectations versus reality. Your weird, deeply personal relationship to something becomes so universal it could describe anyone.
We mistake this for authenticity. A relatable post feels real because it resonates. But relatability and authenticity often move in opposite directions.
The more you shape your experience to be recognizable, the further you drift from what actually happened, what you actually felt, what’s genuinely true about your particular life.
The cost compounds. You start losing track of what you actually think versus what you think you should think. Your inner life begins sounding like everyone else’s because you’re using borrowed frameworks, common descriptors, pre-existing categories. The homogenization isn’t just external performance anymore. It’s affecting how you understand yourself.
The Direct Message
Relatability erases precision, and precision is where meaning lives — in the specific texture of your particular experience, not in the universal language that describes everyone’s.
These distinctions matter tremendously for understanding what you’re experiencing and what might help. But when you flatten your specific version into relatable language, you lose access to that understanding. You start thinking your experience matches everyone else’s because you’re describing it the same way.
The same thing happens with positive experiences. Your version of happiness might involve solitude and deep focus. Someone else’s requires social energy and novelty.
But if you’re always framing experiences for maximum relatability, you describe happiness using standard vocabulary that disconnects you from what actually brings you alive.
Choosing specific over universal
Breaking free from the relatability trap requires permission to be more precise, even when that specificity doesn’t translate to broad audiences.
Notice when you’re editing for universal appeal rather than accuracy. Before posting, write about your actual experience without translating it.
Describe the physical sensation of your anxiety rather than calling it “spiraling.” Detail the pattern in your relationship rather than generalizing about communication. Name what you felt rather than using emotional shorthand.
This reveals how much disappears in translation.
Share details that feel too specific. The weird thing that happened, the strange way you responded, the particular observation that might only resonate with a handful of people.
Some experiences are meant for smaller audiences. Some observations reach three people deeply rather than three hundred superficially, and that matters more.
Stop using language you wouldn’t actually say in conversation. If you don’t naturally think about “pouring from an empty cup,” don’t write it.
If therapeutic terminology doesn’t match how you experience emotions, find different words. The widely circulated phrases feel borrowed because they are borrowed. They’re not describing your experience but a smoothed-out version designed for mass consumption.
The specificity might reach fewer people, but it will reach them more deeply. And you’ll understand yourself better in the process because you’ll stop filtering your actual experience through language designed for everyone else.
Real recognition doesn’t come from posting things anyone could have posted. It comes from articulating something so specific that it reveals something universal in a way generic language never could.
