how to be perceived

you're more in control than you think

My favorite thing to look at is people's bios on social media. From self-proclaimed boutique wellness studio founders on the West Coast to Parisian creative directors and NYC-based models, it’s an infinite buffet of captivating and obscure circles to study and feel excluded from. We’re all producers of our incessantly self-referential and aspirational nature, and we’re obsessed with giving ourselves reputable titles. Others, of course, better take us seriously: it’s never play-pretend, no matter how ridiculous it looks from the outside. I mean, have you also seen an occupation so niche you couldn’t help but question its credibility? Mom, can you come pick me up, somebody just introduced themselves to me as a tastemaker & curator… Anyway. Just how much of one’s identity can theoretically be compressed into a few lines and tags for a high-level broadcast of self to strangers? And if I choose to, let’s say, go by writer, do I define my narrative or does my narrative define me? Who’s the host and the parasite here? Is telling people I’m a writer all it takes to actually be one?

A narrative, to me, is the story or set of stories you tell the world about yourself, encompassing the perceptions you shape in others. Ideally, it should go hand in hand with your identity, maybe in a more curated and intentional form. Don’t underestimate the power of a good narrative or tell me it’s a trivial matter; how you introduce yourself at a party determines the next party you’ll be invited to. In our individualism-tranquilized Western society, much of our identity is about what we do for a living or dying, so crafting the right story about yourself is a form of contemporary art. We have to be brutally honest about the fact that our endless potential for success, social acceptance, and opportunities is less about our capabilities and CVs and more about knowing how to communicate said capabilities with just the right amount of self-flattery. That, and generational wealth, but more on that someday in the future. Do as you please, but you’d want to present yourself in the best light: this is who I am, this is what I’m working on, this is how much you’re allowed to know about me, and this is why you ought to take me seriously. The challenge, of course, is to have a little je ne sais quoi and avoid sounding like you graduated from LinkedIn University. Curating what you’re known for can be such an indulgent, delicious practice when you’re at the steering wheel: take matters into your own hands and draw the line wherever you need it. And it’s obviously easier to do online, democratic almost, every platform yet another open museum for you to arrange. Since making a first impression on Instagram has become more commonplace than IRL, our digital and physical identities have also become ephemerally contextual extensions of one another. Being online is now a primary, not a secondary space for identity formation and self-narration, with real world implications for how you’re treated. So, with all this power at your fingertips, who’s stopping you from being perceived exactly how you want?

There’s so much nuance, though. For one, I’ve always struggled to define myself as one thing at a time, and not just because I’m not the same person I was five minutes ago. Propelling forward a singular narrative feels limiting, one-dimensional, permanent in the worst way, leaving out fractions of information that aren’t any less important than what I’m choosing to communicate. Always due for a rebrand, just never fully satisfied with the limitations of whatever I’ve pigeonholed myself into. My authentic self sits in the hollow gaps of silence between each of my ambitious titles rather than within them, I find. I’ve done many things: made music, quit music, ran a 500k meme page, shut down the meme page. Neither of those is relevant anymore, and yet I can’t pretend that part of my life never existed just because I’ve moved on. Sure, I may want to be known as a writer today, but that’s subject to reciprocity: I’m only okay with the title because my readership is growing, validating my capability and making it somewhat —still blasphemous, though— valid to share the honorary title with all the literary gods I admire. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure I’d be embarrassed. She thinks she’s a writer? You mean, like, an actual one, or a shitposter on the internet? I’m a creative, whatever the cryptic umbrella term governs, but do I still qualify when I haven’t created anything I deem valuable in months, if ever? I’m also a marketer, but only from Monday to Friday and never past 6 PM; bills gotta get paid, you know — while I’ll drink the new Glossier perfume and eat the glass bottle before I attach any corporate endeavors to my identity, I can’t completely denounce where I’m spending most of my daytime hours, either. It feels imperative to craft a narrative that would integrate everything I am and have ever been instead of placing me into secular spaces and boxes; at the same time, it’s impossible to put everything in one sentence without going on a narcissistic tangent nobody asked to hear. Don’t you get sick of talking about yourself sometimes, even in appropriate settings? I can’t stand the sound of my voice, let alone relaying my projects in chronological order. An Instagram bio comes with a character limit for a reason — each one of me just won’t fit. (But then I’m reminded Bridgit Mendler exists, and singularity never stopped her.)

Beyond the obvious purpose of curated self-presentation, does a narrative even matter? It does — if not the reality of it, then at least the intent. Consider this: your narrative is not for others, it’s for you. The manifestation aspect of crafting a story about yourself you can be proud of cannot be downplayed. I think — therefore I tell — therefore I am. It’s not something in the metaphysical realms, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: your narrative is an instrument of determinism and a playbook for how you’re going to show up in certain circles and spaces. Better yet, whether you’ll have the audacity to show up. By assigning myself titles I may not think I deserve yet, I’m reverse-engineering to where they eventually apply to me. Bandura talked about this extensively in his work on self-efficacy (1997). Self-efficacy —not to be mistaken for self-esteem— is an individual's belief in their ability to achieve goals: when one crafts a narrative they aspire to, the story they tell themselves becomes a guide for their actions, shaping subsequent behavior and decisions. We don’t set random goals praying we have what it takes to achieve them; we set the goals based on what we already subconsciously believe we can accomplish. “Among the mechanisms of human agency, none is more central or pervasive than people's beliefs in their efficacy to influence events that affect their lives.” Perhaps the only forever-cure for impostor syndrome is telling stories about yourself you’d like to believe are true. Who needs certainty anyway? Meet me at the intersection of what you think about yourself and what you want others to think of you, manipulated in your favor. I’ll be there, and I promise I won’t snitch — I know you’re a manifestation ingenue, not a liar.

Everyone has a narrative; it’s not something reserved for aspiring influencers, up-and-coming Antwerp designers, or Ariana Grande. Even your grandmother has one. The variable is your awareness of it, which is precisely why I’m a huge advocate for being proactive about your narrative and claiming agency over its shapeshifting. Afraid of becoming too obsessed with yourself? Good point, even Jemima Kirke says we think about ourselves too much. I see where she’s coming from and it’s true, there’s something deeply pathological going on both in everyday interactions and across all mediums of creative expression; everyone is fixated on their narrative and nobody else’s. It’s an endless me, me, me nonsense — don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty, too. But I can’t shake the feeling that the real issue isn’t self-preoccupation itself, but rather the anxious, frantic way we’re going about it: constantly trying to prove ourselves to others, overcompensating for where we fall short, often to the point of being loud and insufferable, leaving no space for others to shine. It’s a fun paradox: being unsure of who you are only makes you more self-obsessed. Narcissistic thrills aside, what exactly are we getting out of that besides endless frustration? I think this type of self-preoccupation stems from feeling out of control: with the world, with ourselves and our bodies, and most importantly, with our narratives. Time to take a deep breath and admit the liberation of shaping our story rather than letting others define what we are or aren’t. What we put out in the world is what we’ll see reflected back to us — simple as that. Your narrative is as real as you believe it to be. This is why rebrands happen. This is how Addison Rae went from TikToker to pop star flawlessly.

All of this, of course, comes with the crushing weight of being known. For those of us who get queasy at the mere thought of being perceived as something —as anything— this one’s hard to exercise. Whether you want to or not, you already exist in people’s heads. While perception is volatile and you’ll never truly know what someone thinks, your narrative is in your hands, still. A big exhale. So, if you want to be known as an artist, you must not only have the audacity to say it everywhere you go, but actively reiterate it with confidence for those in the back of the hall who didn’t hear you the first time. If you think that’s cringe and excessive, remember that it’s not about vanity or bragging — this reinforcement cognitively helps you get better at what you do. As my readership grows quicker than I’d anticipated, so does the spatial awareness of the narratives I’ve been creating for myself. Keeping my writing mostly autobiographical is a conscious choice — I simply have no interest in keeping others at arm’s length or preserving mystique. I know nothing about “moving in silence”, fine by me. I’m comfortable with my narrative, deliberate in how I convey myself online and offline, and doing so weirdly offsets both excessive self-preoccupation and the panic of knowing others will always have opinions about me I can’t do anything about. It’s a win-win all around, really.

You write your own story — might as well make it an interesting one to read. Show up. Get them intrigued. Make them highlight the best one-liners. The next time you look in the mirror, remember that you are not just your body and face, your quirks and icks, goals and aspirations, fears and fixations; you’re also the stories you tell about yourself, transcending the material and extending far beyond. These stories, whether seen by two people or two million, matter. You have more control over your life than you think you do, and crafting narratives that may seem a little too bold and ambitious is one way to help you become the person you want to be, even if it feels like doing standup most of the time. Everyone deserves a narrative that helps them thrive, not hinders them. Maybe it’s not a bad thing that we talk and think about ourselves as much as we do — we just need to do it with a little more intention and blind faith. Bring back the childlike whimsy of the first time we heard the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?.” A tastemaker & curator. Duh.