What sorts of words would you describe yourself as? Considering your column of choice, I can only assume it would only be good ones: perhaps you would consider yourself to be creative, stunningly beautiful or whip-smart. And I agree, you are all of those things.
Now consider other, possibly more specific terms. Maybe your gender, maybe your sexuality, maybe you have ADHD or anxiety. Consider those labels and whether you’ve internalized what they mean or not (spoiler alert, you have) in regards to your current identity.
Now, with every adjective you take in mind when considering your identity, question how early you adopted the adjective relative to your development. Some things will have been adopted earlier than others (I, for instance, being a man, might’ve adopted that label for my gender as a part of my identity earlier than I would’ve adopted the label “writer”). The very long and drawn-out point being made here is that a few of them probably served as guidelines rather than something you grew into: instead of being a label you found to fit you already, you expected yourself to belong to a certain group and, consciously or unconsciously, changed your behavior to better fit what’s expected of that group. This behavior concerning molding your personality to fit a label, the same way one would mold their body in self-hatred to fit certain clothing, can concern anything from a large label (like “man”) to a miniscule one (perhaps whatever internet community you found yourself involved with during the pandemic).
It would be incredibly easy to blame the individual for this behavior, almost as easy as it is wrong. Every human wants to feel like an ideal member of their in-group, and will change their behavior to fit there, even if it might not truly satisfy their deepest selves. It’s a survival instinct, and in all honesty, the process described above is a much healthier expression of said survival instinct than other, historical responses to a perceived lack of belonging.
With that being said, the effect of algorithms on how people think has a fascinating overlap with how people mold themselves to fit certain labels. My personal theory is that social media expands access to almost any community to an almost global audience instantly, in effect ballooning the size of any and every established community. As a result, because individuals can’t really “feel out” who is an insider anymore due to sheer scale producing inevitable variation, they instead adopt a rubrical approach: “Well, you’re a fan of this, so of course (x) assumption should be accurate.” Rather than being a familial belonging, it's a criterial one, which causes people to feel the need to jump through arbitrary hoops in order to retain that sense of belonging they crave.
But for the record, dear reader, I’d love you no matter what criteria you fail to meet.