I hate living in a world where everything can be recorded forever

I deeply despise living in a world where everything you do can be recorded and uploaded for everyone to see.

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I grew up in the 90s, before smartphones, before social media, before the internet became a permanent witness. I understand the benefits of connectivity. I know documentation can be powerful. But I miss the kind of freedom that no longer exists, the freedom to fail, to experiment, to be messy without it becoming a permanent record that can follow you forever.

I remember swimming naked in a creek without fear. I remember trying skateboarding and failing spectacularly, eating dirt, laughing, getting up, trying again. I remember performing badly in front of my family, forgetting lines on stage and crying through the embarrassment. I remember playing stupid, silly games my parents never knew about. I remember traveling to another continent and being unreachable except by phone, forced to figure things out on my own. Those moments shaped me, and none of them were content.

Now everything feels dangerous.

People get exposed after accidents. Drunk comments are ripped out of context and turned into moral verdicts. Children are documented years before they can even understand consent. Entire narratives are built around a single bad day, a single mistake, a single moment of vulnerability. And once it’s online, it’s no longer yours.

I don’t feel free anymore.

Even in nature, even on remote hikes, there’s a part of my brain that never shuts off. If I went skinny dipping in a lake, what if someone’s flying a drone? What if that clip ends up online and costs me my job, my reputation, the respect I’ve spent years building? The paranoia isn’t irrational anymore. It’s learned.

You can’t have a bad day. You can’t fail quietly. You can’t be awkward, emotional, or human without immediately needing to perform confidence and humor to survive it. Everything must be laughed off. Everything must be branded as “unbothered.”

Four or five years ago, I had one of the happiest nights of my life. I was with friends, we had some drinks, and we ended up laughing and dancing in someone’s yard while it rained. It felt spontaneous and private and real. It felt like something meant to live only as a memory.

Then I saw a friend recording us from the porch.

The joy evaporated instantly. Why was he filming? Would he post it? Who would see it? Could my employer see it? Would it hurt my career? Would I look stupid and become a joke? The moment was gone the second it became documentation.

Just yesterday I saw a video of a woman getting arrested for feeding pigeons. Why did I need to see that? She wasn’t hurting anyone. Who knows what was happening in her life that led to that moment? And yet now she’s frozen in time as “the illegal pigeon lady,” her entire identity flattened into a clip.

I once had a boss who hosted parties with a strict no photos, no videos rule so people could relax. And even there, people secretly recorded.

I like people. I enjoy connection. I’m not antisocial. But the constant threat of unconsensual permanence is exhausting. It makes me retreat inward. It makes solitude feel safer than community.

Schopenhauer once said that a person can only be truly free when they are alone. I didn’t understand that quote when I was younger. I do now.

I don’t want to disappear because I hate people. I want to disappear because I miss freedom. Because living under constant observation makes even joy feel fragile.

I just want to vanish.

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