"A good amount of people are going through a tremendous amount of a lot and they have their bosom filled with an unhealthy dose of shege."

—Precious 2026

People de go through a lot oo, nor let anybody whine you oo.

There is a performance happening on your screen every single day and most of us are either starring in it, watching it, or silently suffering because of it.

The reign of curated and aesthetically pleasing content, well-placed 9-5 vlogs, appealing business content and colour-corrected breakfast plates has now created a very interesting divide, some people are living their best life online, while others are watching from the sidelines wishing it was them, while their own life is decidedly not aesthetically pleasing.

And I will tell you exactly why I think that is.

The Screen Doesn't Show the Shege

Real life cannot be edited and that in itself is the core problem for many individuals and I do not entirely blame them.

You cannot slap a filter on a difficult month or use a trending audio to make a job rejection feel cinematic.

You cannot slow-pan across a hospital waiting room and make it look like a vibe.

But online? Everything is a moment. Everything is content and everything is slowly transitioning to be "the journey." No shades or insults to anyone documenting their lives— the people I am talking about know themselves.

I am sure that when many people rewatch their own videos, they do not fully believe that they are the ones inside those videos. Because the version of themselves on screen and the version sitting in their house at 2am at night are two very different characters living in two very different realities.

Ahh—dem dey go through a lot.

Social media has evolved from what was allegedly its original intention—connection—into something else entirely.

It is now a platform for performance. A stage where everyone always seems to be having the best time of their lives, which leaves you sitting with your own quiet, unfiltered existence wondering what exactly you are doing wrong.

And the comments below this post always confirm it. "God when." "Am I a spoon." Flying across every polished video from onlookers who are equally performing their own version of being unbothered while deeply bothered.

The Algorithm Rewards the Performance

Here is the part nobody wants to fully admit. The reason the performance continues is because it works.

Curated content gets engagement. Aspirational living gets followers. The carefully constructed 9-5 vlog with the matching mug and the journaling session and the golden hour walk gets saved and shared by thousands of people who are also trying to curate their own version of the same video.

Nobody is posting the day they could not get out of bed. Nobody is filming the conversation that went badly or the plan that completely collapsed.

Nobody is making content about sitting in traffic for two hours after a meeting that achieved absolutely nothing.

So what you see online is a highlight reel that has been mistaken for someone's full life. And because everyone is showing only the highlight reel, everyone else watching starts to believe that their own full life—with all its mess and slowness and unglamorous Tuesday afternoons—is somehow behind schedule.

It is not, but the algorithm will not tell you that.

Real Life Is Allowed to Be Slow

This is the part I actually want people to sit with, because I feel it—no, I know it—to some degree that it is because real life sucks most of the time, beyond our control and does not inform us.

I am not gonna lie, real life sucks for many people and cannot be edited, so in contrast many people curate it so perfectly online.

That is my opinion and you are allowed to disagree. I am not claiming to be entirely right. But I am very sure I am not entirely wrong either.

But the reason that i am actually writing this is just for one reason.

Life can be slow!

It can be exhausting on some days and on those days, the most productive thing you can do is rest and that is allowed. It is fine if something did not go as planned. That does not make you a failure.

If you failed at something, it only means one thing: you tried, and now you have a pattern you will not repeat next time. Thomas Edison reportedly failed a thousand times before the lightbulb.

The present day users of the internet would have cancelled him by attempt twelve. Life does not always have to be on a dopamine rush. Not every week needs to look like a vision board, not every phase needs content.

Some seasons are just seasons—quiet, slow, building, unremarkable from the outside and deeply necessary from the inside.

The people thriving loudest online are not always thriving the loudest in real life and the people living quietly, unbothered, unposted, and genuinely present are not losing anything—they are just not performing.

Sometimes just close that app in front of you. Check in with actual life, it is messier, slower, and far more honest than anything your timeline will ever show you.

And that is okay.

See you on the next one!