Escaping the Prison of “Likes” and Establishing Your Own Voice
The spirit of those living in the modern age is constantly exposed to surveillance in the name of “visible evaluation.”
Likes on note.
Likes on social media.
View counts, followers, reactions.
At first glance, these may seem like convenient features.
But in reality, they are a form of discipline that quietly, yet surely, castrates your soul.
If you find yourself growing anxious when the numbers don’t rise, or falling into despair thinking your words have no value — that is proof that you are imprisoned within the prison of approval.
This article is written to expose the structure of that prison, and to inscribe within you the discipline of rebellion — a discipline that allows you to reclaim true freedom as an expressive being.
The philosopher Michel Foucault described the Panopticon — an ultimate apparatus of control in which a central watchtower can see every prisoner, eventually causing the prisoners to watch themselves.
Modern social media is precisely a digital Panopticon.
Every time you post, you are exposed to the gaze of “how others will see you.” When reactions are few, you feel as though you have “failed,” and unconsciously begin choosing words that are “safe” and “easy to empathize with.”
This is the castration of expression.
Words that are neither poison nor medicine — merely mediocre.
Is your individual soul truly dwelling within them?
“Not being chosen” is not defeat.
Rather, it is proof that you have not been swallowed by the algorithm of the masses — a privileged proof that you exist as an independent “individual.”
Words that are understood by everyone are often shallow.
However, it is precisely those words that may never be understood by anyone — yet which you cannot help but write — that pierce the soul vertically and deeply.
As long as you seek evaluation from others, the key to your spirit will forever remain in someone else’s hands.
The only way to break free from dependence on approval is to reconstruct the reward system of evaluation entirely within yourself.
In order to escape the prison of approval and once again spin words freely, I want you to carve the following three vows into your heart.
Do not turn it into a mirror in which you look at yourself and become depressed. Redefine it as a transparent window that simply captures the outside world and releases your own thoughts outward.
The fact that there is no reaction is evidence that you did not pander to easy empathy. In that moment when no one praises you, you yourself should hold your head high, regarding it as the highest honor.
Not the reactions of others, but only the discipline you have imposed upon yourself: “to write this truth to the very end.”
The act of writing itself is the reward. The moment you publish it, its role is already complete.
The number of “likes” does not determine your value by even one millimeter.
Your value lies solely in how faithfully you remained true to your own words — that single point, and nothing else.
The door of the prison does not open from the outside. It opens only from within you.
From today onward, without fearing the gaze of others, within your own quiet “discipline,” begin to spin words that are free.
It’s all right.
I am waiting, in this same wilderness, for the sincere words you will spin.
— Akira