With love from the cities of heavy clouds hanging above us.

The guilt of a modern dweller is real. And is it a part of a imposter syndrome? Or is it social media?

Imagine being so guilt ridden and heavy about the world you feel guilty just being happy and carefree for a moment. Guilty about buying things, because you don’t want to disrespect anyone doing it tough. Guilty about enjoying life when at the same time people are fighting for their freedom.

Is it always the middle class who feels guilty though? True wealth and financial richness does not seem to bother the people that actually have it. So why do we feel guilty then? We, the middle class, don’t really have anything to feel bad about when it comes to ostentatious displays of wealth.

The guilt of a modern dweller is real. And is it a part of a imposter syndrome?

Covid changed everything. The feeling of freedom was taken away and switched into house arrest and supermarket rations. Travelling felt at the time impossible and the world shrunk into a bubble the size of your own home. Something shifted in our brains, perhaps the realisation that life can end at any time became like a heavy cloud hanging above our cities.

After covid, the world as we knew it felt like it had gone mad. And it feels like it is hard to come back from. Even now at 2026 the ripple effects are real and we are feeling it.

Emotional lightness is something I miss. I do not want to bear others pain in me. Yet it is hard not to when tuning into online. I try my best to train my algorithm to work for me and thus far it has worked well. My Instagram feed is what it’s meant to be. But TikTok is tougher. I only started using TikTok really last year. I wanted to make a case study on how I would experience the app that is so polarising.

I want to make a case here.

Instagram has never given me imposter syndrome or made me feel not enough, in fact it is the only platform I have felt connected and loved in. Because the platforms are very different, opening a TikTok account felt hugely challenging and much harder to work with. I know they have their own features and functions that do not resemble each other. But as a creator shifting my content strategy into TikTok has left me feeling hollow.

And it is okay.

I did prepare myself for this and being curious was my only agenda. Now, after a year of using it, and seeing the effects and the way it functions, I can say that I personally love Instagram even more.

Social media is never going to fulfil us as humans. There will always be hollowness to it that just not feel the same than a face to face human interaction. And that understanding may ease the feeling of disconnection. Compartmentalising social media to what it is- a tool, a place of interactions, place for business. For some of us, time spent to fill hours in a day.

For me, still an exploration into my own creativity. A space that is deeper than just the world, but as deep as I allow my own consciousnes to be.

When the world is on fire and goes on everyday. We watch the heavy clouds hanging above us.

Are you looking at the sky or the screen?

T