The thing about modern loneliness is that it hits different when your phone's at 17%.
Not low enough to panic. Just low enough to notice that no one's checking in.
Last Tuesday I watched a couple argue outside a coffee shop for 20 minutes. Not the dramatic kind - the quiet, devastating kind where you can tell they've had this exact fight before. He kept looking at his phone while she spoke. Classic displacement activity.
I almost wanted to tap him on the shoulder. Tell him: "This is the moment you'll remember when it's over. Not whatever's in your inbox." But I didn't. Because I was also on my phone, documenting someone else's intimacy crisis for my own minor epiphany. The surveillance economy of feelings.
And that’s the thing.
We talk about connection more than any generation before us. We post about empathy. We meme about vulnerability. But for all our emotional fluency, we’re still terrified of being misunderstood in real-time.
We’re self-aware to the point of paralysis. Editing our personalities for different audiences. Filtering our feelings through aesthetics and captions. Talking about boundaries like they’re chic little accessories rather than hard-won, unsexy choices.
There's something weirdly beautiful about how we keep trying anyway. How we still text first sometimes. How we still risk the mortifying ordeal of being earnest when every cultural cue tells us to be above it all. How we still send voice notes we're scared to listen back to.
Maybe that's the real flex - not the curated grid or clever caption, but the willingness to be sincere in a world that rewards detachment. To say "I miss you" without wrapping it in three layers of irony.
KENNY GREGOIRE | INTIMACY (2011)
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR BRANDS
We love to talk about connection, but rarely sit with the discomfort it requires. It’s easy to sound emotionally fluent when you’ve got a copy deck and a content calendar. Harder when someone replies in the comments with, “Actually, I’m not okay.”
Most brand empathy lives at surface level - a carousel post here, a campaign hashtag there. We’ve mistaken tone of voice for tone of care. Slick language. Sexy slide decks. Minimal follow-through.
The real stuff? That’s not reactive. It’s not waiting for a cultural moment. It’s built into how you show up when no one’s watching - and especially when no one's clapping. Not just saying “we’re listening” but being prepared to change what you do because of what you heard.
Why?
Because people are done being spoken to in lowercase empathy. They’re fluent in nuance now. They can smell manufactured sincerity a kilometre away.
Maybe brands should stop trying to feel human and focus on behaving humanely. Less "we're all in this together." More "we fixed the thing that was annoying you."
In a world where everyone's performing authenticity, the most radical act might be actually showing up. Being curious instead of certain. Responding to what's happening instead of what's trending.
Maybe that's enough. Or maybe it's everything.
I have a sneaky suspicion that it's the latter.