When did everyone start reading from the same script?

Are we activists? Or is it personal exhibitionism in disguise?

Before you file me away in whatever box is handy, let me tell you who I am. I work in the creative industry. My jeans are baggier than anything on a breakfast news panel. I’ll happily waste a fiver on a flat white made from beans that had a more meaningful gap year than I did, crushed by a barista with better tattoos and a stronger opinion on capitalism than most MPs.

I like my life. I try to be decent. I pay attention.

I don’t feel like I’m on any side of the political spectrum. Because if you don’t declare your credentials early, someone will do it for you. And it won’t be flattering.

In the past few years I’ve built a new circle, in one of the fastest growing cities in Europe. Eight-a-side lads on weeknights. Different ages. Different backgrounds. Different faiths. Different opinions. A melting pot of culture. Then there’s my partner’s friends, all mid twenties younger, sharper with their politics than they are with their pints and lines. But… always the same talking points.

Maybe that’s what happens when your worldview is assembled by algorithm?

I’ve noticed something uncomfortable.

Outrage seems to travel selectively.

If the villain fits the approved silhouette, the volume goes up. If the story complicates the script, it gets quieter.

There are places in the world where black Christian communities are being slaughtered, and the silence from people who usually care so loudly is… noticeable. More recently Iran, scroll through Instagram and you’ll see plenty of Palestine flags in bios. It’s become a kind of digital shorthand for moral alignment. But when Iranian women were ripping off their hijabs in the street and getting beaten for it, the feeds were quieter. Not silent. Just… quieter. The same accounts that can mobilise overnight for one cause often struggle to find the energy for another. Especially when the oppressor doesn’t fit the preferred storyline.

I’m not suddenly wearing a red cap. But when someone acknowledges a problem everyone else pretends isn’t there, it makes you pay attention.

I don’t think people are stupid. Most of them are thoughtful, decent, trying to orient themselves in a world that moves too fast to fully process.

But the algorithm doesn’t reward depth. It rewards certainty. It rewards alignment. It rewards outrage that fits neatly inside a square graphic and disappears after forty-eight hours.

Compassion is messy. It doesn’t always come with a clear villain. It doesn’t always flatter the side you think you’re on.

And maybe that’s the real shift. Recent reports have told us that Gen Z are the first generation to be less intelligent than the previous generation. Have our brains become pixelated? Or is it not that they’ve become less intelligent, but become less curious. Less willing to hold two uncomfortable truths at once.

If your moral compass updates every time your feed refreshes, is it really a compass at all?

That’s what unsettles me. Not that people care. But that they care in sync.