The increasing cost of individuality

Writing publicly is one of the bravest things I do. Mostly, because I assume you care about what I think, which isn’t very rational. But every time you tell me that you read and that it matters, I feel a lot less narcissistic. Last week’s newsletter seemed to resonate with many of you. Thank you for reaching out.

This week, I read a LinkedIn post about a Substack post about how we are losing the “weird” in the world. The Substack post is excellent, and it has charts (lots of charts). Essentially, it shows how we are all becoming a lot less interesting.

Instead, we are good citizens: not joining cults, not having sex, not moving across countries. There are even fewer serial killers these days. While some of these changes may be viewed as positive, others may be less so. But the argument is that individuality and uniqueness are lost.

And the cost is not only on an individual level.

By having less deviant and contrarian thinking in the world, we also get secondary consequences for society at large. I was listening to Oxford professor Juliane Reineke give a Keynote at the Stockholm School of Economics a month or so ago, and she showed data indicating that we see less innovation today than throughout history.

This is also supported by the original Substack post, which has collected the references on how the rate of scientific progress has declined. New ideas are not replacing old ones at the same rate, and we’re making fewer major innovations per person than we did 50 years ago. Even popular music is more homogeneous and has more repetitive lyrics than ever.

If only the venture capitalists knew about this. Who dares to tell them?

A similar trend is the viral insight from the Science Museum Group a few years ago, about how the world is losing its colour. Optimising for the colours most people like has made the world more grey, and many environments today are a lot less colourful than they were 50 years ago. Buildings are boring, etc.

I also think this applies to people.

We don’t just avoid joining cults these days. We are optimising for doing well in this pyramid scheme of life:

1. Getting good grades and well-paid jobs.
2. Being chosen by friends who have lots of other options.
3. Finding spouses through algorithmic matching.
4. Buying houses that we can sell at a profit someday.
5. Hunting likes and followers on social media.
6. Having a “personal” style that follows the trends.
7. Consuming the shows and music that people are talking about.

And all of a sudden, all the fun is gone.

One of my PhD peers told me that when she worked as a teaching assistant at Harvard, students had developed a habit of dropping courses where they could not earn an A. Because having a perfect GPA was more important than the subject matter they studied.

And well beyond optimising for perfect grades, plastic surgery and beauty treatments are making it possible for people to optimise even their facial features — removing individual facial characteristics like a unique nose or a tooth gap.

It seems we’ve decided that the cost of individuality is not worth it.

And believe me: I’m no better than the rest of you.

I spent most of my childhood hiding the fact that I love programming. I didn’t dare to study engineering because I was worried I would be the only woman. I have a “scandi style” closet filled with clothes from Arket. And I’ve spent the last six months exploring a new hobby without telling any of my friends, to give myself time to make up my own mind before I do.

I’m pretty sure that we all have things we hide because we worry about what people might think. More people than we realise optimise themselves for job security and online dating success, rather than discovering who they truly are.

But when I see the larger cost of all of us staying in line and playing it safe — the lack of global innovation, the ugly buildings, the monochrome closet — I feel like it’s time for a revolution.

Being weird might be scary. But so are most things that matter. And wouldn’t you rather live in a world of colour, sex, and innovation?

Maybe the simplest way to save the world is to be more weird.

Let’s join a cult!

/Anna

—

RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE WEEK

AI and JOBS — When LLMs make it effortless to write polished job applications, those applications no longer signal who’s actually talented—new research shows that this creates a less meritocratic market, where high-ability workers are hired 19% less often.

ELON MUSK and DEMOCRACY — An investigation from Sky News tracking 90,000 posts on UK politics reveals X’s algorithm systematically amplifies right-wing content regardless of users’ political leanings, boosting the politicians Musk endorses while suppressing left-wing voices. Over half the political content shown came from accounts using extreme language, with right-wing extremism dominating 72% of that content.

AI and RECRUITMENT — Researchers used AI to predict personality traits from LinkedIn photos of 96,000 MBA graduates. They found these “readings” predict salary, seniority, and career advancement as well as test scores, raising urgent questions about algorithmic discrimination in hiring.

MEDIA and DEMOCRACY — Cable news may account for one-third of America’s increased cultural polarisation since 2000, according to a Harvard paper. Cable news outlets, whose business model values audience size, have discovered that polarising “culture-war” topics attract people who wouldn’t otherwise watch the news, thereby emphasising those topics more.

AI and DIGITAL DIVIDE — ChatGPT traffic more than doubled in a year and now captures 77% of the generative AI market, according to a World Bank paper. Still, a stark digital divide is emerging: 24% of users in rich countries access it versus just 0.7% in low-income countries, revealing how AI adoption is deepening global divides.