> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.tawnymagazine.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # I’m Not an Influencer, So Why Does My Life Feel Like Content? - URL: https://www.tawnymagazine.com/im-not-an-influencer-so-why-does-my-life-feel-like-content/ - Published: 2026-09-29T09:00:29.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-29T09:00:29.000Z - Description: I went to capture the perfect sunset and realized I’d barely seen it without my phone. When did living our lives turn into producing them for an invisible audience? - Author: Sarah Veldman - Tags: Social Media, Influencers, Self-Reflection, Personal Essay, All Features, All Culture “Pics or it didn’t happen!” That’s what popped into my head while I was watching an absolutely stunning sunset with my husband and daughter on the shores of Lake Garda this past summer. I’m talking one of those sunsets that was fully pink, with bits of orange and yellow; Mother Nature showing off, really. And I’ll even make a small confession here: I was actually drafting the post in my head as said sunset was still going on, imagining all the likes I would get from my measly 146 followers. Rather than actually living in the moment, I was living in my prospective Instagram feed. Did this revelation stop me? Absolutely not. I still took over 15 pictures and was Googling motivational quotes when I looked up and realized I had missed it. I mean, I had 15 identical pictures on my camera roll, but I hadn’t even glimpsed it without my phone. --- ## I'm Not Even An Influencer The worst part is that I’m not even an influencer. I’m not chasing brand deals or a blue checkmark. But somewhere along the way, I’ve developed the reflexes of one, minus the thousands of followers and free stuff. Since the development of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and every other social media website, literally everything has become content for clicks, comments, and likes. And I don’t just mean the big stuff like weddings, graduations, vacations, and cute dogs; we document absolutely everything. A workout quickly comes with a caption about “growth.” A breakup becomes a “healing era” that sounds like a Spotify Wrapped category. A meal turns cold as we try to get the best angle of French fries on a plate. We announce new chapters of our lives the way authors used to, except the chapter is just a normal Tuesday, the author is us, and there is no publisher, just an algorithm that decides whether that chapter actually deserves any eyeballs on it. Obviously, I say all this with love and no hate toward social media because, as you saw at the beginning of this, I’m guilty too. ## My Most Humbling Experience I will confess my most humbling experience to you now. Two years ago, my husband surprised me with a weekend away for my birthday. We were in the cutest little house in the cutest little German town, and I bought a giant pretzel just to get a picture of it with the timber houses as a backdrop. In the car on the way there, I was already imagining the great pictures I would get, drafting a caption in my mind like a press release about my life. My husband didn’t have to say anything because he had already noticed. He didn’t say anything, which is so much worse, because it was that obvious. Why do we do this? I think it’s the old philosophical thought: If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to capture it for an Instagram Boomerang, did it actually happen? We’ve absorbed the saying “pics or it didn’t happen” so deeply that it stopped being a joke and became an actual belief system that we all live by. Not documenting an experience seriously starts to make it feel like it didn’t actually happen, or at least that it doesn’t count. --- ## The Dopamine Gremlin There’s also, I’ll admit, a small dopamine gremlin always around the corner to scare us into submission. The validation you feel is real when you get even 10 likes on your sunset picture, and our caveman brains are just not sophisticated enough to tell the difference between “this person is so impressed with my sunset picture” and “this person is so impressed with me.” But mostly, I think we’ve unknowingly slid from living our lives to narrating them in real time, and that narration is eating into the living. With all that said, I decided to run an experiment because I’m the kind of person who needs a bit to force herself into a certain behavior, especially one that’s good for me. I picked a dinner, not a super special one or anything, but just a normal outing with some friends. I turned off my phone and left it in my bag the whole time. (I wasn’t going to do that whole “face down” thing because that’s just a lie we tell ourselves.) ## I Was Trying To "Perform" For An Invisible Audience I regret to report that it was extremely uncomfortable at first. Not because I “missed” my phone, but because of the way I was performing for an invisible audience. My performance was called “having a great time,” and normally, I would be capturing photographic evidence. Without the camera there, I had no idea what to do with my “performance,” and it felt like being handed a microphone with no audience. I laughed at something my friend said and genuinely panicked, thinking, “Is anyone going to know this happened?” And then, right after: “Does it matter if they do?” By the second hour, though, I was having so much fun that I completely forgot about my phone. It was fun that was not documented, but I was there, so I know it happened, and that’s all that matters. Now, let me be very clear: I don’t plan on throwing my phone into the sea all Carrie Bradshaw-esque. I also don’t plan on pulling a Henry David Thoreau and moving to a cabin in the woods, nor will I be churning my own butter. Some things actually deserve to be documented: a wedding or Grandma’s 90th birthday. All dog photos are mandatory, non-negotiable. This certainly isn’t an anti-phone or anti-social media manifesto; there are enough of those on the internet. --- ## I Want To Notice The Moment I'm In It’s more that I want to have the option. I want to have the ability to notice the moment I’m in and know when I’ve stopped experiencing something and started producing it. I want to just let something happen to me organically rather than make it for an audience of 146 followers. Last week, I was back at the beach at home in the Netherlands, and there was another beautiful sunset. I quickly snapped one picture and put away my phone to enjoy the sunset with my family. I watched it live, in real time, knowing that as long as I was a witness to my own life, it didn’t matter if anyone else saw. **My hair looked terrible, and the only people around to notice were my family and me.**