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The Internet is Causing Us to Lose Touch with Our Real Self 

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The Internet is Causing Us to Lose Touch with Our Real Self 

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The Internet Grants Us an Illusion of Freedom

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The Internet Grants Us an Illusion of Freedom

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“Even as we became increasingly sad and ugly on the internet, the mirage of the better online self continued to glimmer.” (p. 5)

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“Even as we became increasingly sad and ugly on the internet, the mirage of the better online self continued to glimmer.” (p. 5)

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“As a medium, the internet is defined by a built-in performance incentive.” (p. 5)

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“As a medium, the internet is defined by a built-in performance incentive.” (p. 5)

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"In real life, there’s a limited audience and time span for every performance. Online, your audience can hypothetically keep expanding forever, and the performance never has to end." (p. 11)

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"In real life, there’s a limited audience and time span for every performance. Online, your audience can hypothetically keep expanding forever, and the performance never has to end." (p. 11)

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"The everyday architecture perpetuated by the internet is the madness of this architecture, which positions personal identity as the center of the universe." (p. 11)

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"The everyday architecture perpetuated by the internet is the madness of this architecture, which positions personal identity as the center of the universe." (p. 11)

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“The internet was dramatically increasing our ability to know about things, while our ability to change things stayed the same, or possibly shrank right in front of us.” (p. 25)

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“The internet was dramatically increasing our ability to know about things, while our ability to change things stayed the same, or possibly shrank right in front of us.” (p. 25)

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“The final, and possibly most psychologically destructive, distortion of the social internet is its distortion of scale.” (p. 24)

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“The final, and possibly most psychologically destructive, distortion of the social internet is its distortion of scale.” (p. 24)

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These quotes show how the internet pressures us to create a false version of ourselves. The first quote highlights how, even when we feel unhappy, we still chase the illusion of a "better" online self. The second explains why—because the internet rewards performance, making us feel like we must always put on a show. Together, they reveal how social media encourages us to fake perfection for approval rather than be authentic.

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These quotes show how the internet distorts our sense of self. The first quote explains that, unlike in real life, where performances end, the internet forces us to maintain a constant, growing audience, making it harder to separate our true selves from our online personas. The second quote highlights how the internet makes us feel like the center of everything, reinforcing a self-obsessed digital identity. Together, they suggest that the internet traps us in a cycle of endless self-presentation, making it difficult to truly know who we are offline.

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These quotes reveal how the internet creates the illusion of empowerment while actually limiting real action. The first quote highlights how the internet floods us with information, making us feel informed and engaged, yet it does little to increase our ability to create real change. The second quote explains that the internet distorts our sense of importance and influence, making small things seem huge while real issues feel distant or overwhelming. Together, they suggest that while the internet feels like a tool for freedom, it often distracts us from meaningful action.

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The internet tricks us into thinking we have endless freedom to express ourselves, but in reality, it forces us to create fake, polished versions of who we are. Instead of connecting with our true selves, we become obsessed with how others see us, making the online world feel more like a trap than a place of real self-expression

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This reading made me realize how much the internet forces us to perform instead of just being ourselves. We think we're expressing our true selves online, but really, we're curating every detail for validation. Over time, this makes us lose touch with who we really are.

What stuck with me most is the illusion of freedom. The internet feels like a place where we can be anyone, but in reality, we're just trapped in a cycle of comparison and approval. It made me question if real freedom is about being seen online—or not needing to be seen at all.