Most of the time, what isolation produces is not depth. It produces a self-concept.
And a self-concept is not a self. It is a theory about a self.
The internet has made it incredibly easy to mistake social atrophy for intellectual superiority. People sit alone in their rooms, mainlining hyper-niche subcultures, and obsessing over highly specific interests. Since their inner monologues are loud and screen time is high, they become thoroughly convinced that they are intricate, multi-layered labyrinths of profound depth. These people look out the window, at the ordinary folks living their lives, and instantly dismiss them as "normies." They tell themselves that ordinary people are shallow, predictable, and beneath their frequency.
This is the supreme delusion of the modern outcast.
I had to come back to this topic. Because there are things I don't want you miss out.
You aren't complex. You are just under-socialized.
These people never got close too close to people. They stopped at the surface. Because getting below the surface of another human being requires the specific social skill, patience, and genuine curiosity that isolation specifically fails to develop.
The "normie" is the label of someone who ran their assessment from a safe distance and called the distance sophistication.
The person who calls everyone else a normie is almost always the most normal person in the room.
They have not escaped conformity. They have exchanged one conformity for a smaller, more self-congratulatory one.
The person who downloaded their complete worldview from a platform, is not an individual. They are a highly predictable configuration of memetic material.
The platform that served them the content knows exactly what they'll click next. Knows their preferences before they do. Has them categorized with a specificity that would disturb them if they saw it.
They are the very product of an algorithm they believe they've escaped.
But to them, it feels like awakening.
Here is what actually produces depth: Friction.
Depth built from ingestion is stored. It is a large collection of very precisely filed information about the world that has never been metabolized through actual living. Extraordinary monologues. Impressive frameworks. Highly specific opinions about complex matters.
And then you get into a room with a difficult human being and something goes wrong.
Because the stored depth doesn't know how to handle the friction.
The ideas that were perfectly maintained in the closed environment of your own head, where nothing pushed back, where everything confirmed what you already believed, start to fail in the open environment where things push back constantly and confirmation is not guaranteed.
This is when the person who has been calling everyone else shallow discovers something devastating about the actual depth of their own structure.
There is a difference between organic density and memetic atrophy.
An organically deep person is dense. They have distinct tastes, hard boundaries, and original thoughts because they have lived through. They don't need to wear their eccentricity like a neon sign. They can walk into a room of ordinary blue-collar workers, a corporate boardroom, or a crowded market, and can connect with anyone. Why? Because they know that human beings are like icebergs. They respect the hidden depth in others because they are aware of the depth in themselves.
The self-proclaimed deep person just fears rejection. They look down on ordinary interactions because they don't have the social stomach to handle an awkward pause, introduce themselves to a stranger, or steer through a real human disagreement. They call everyone else shallow simply because they lack the skill, the empathy, and the courage to get to know them well enough to see their depth. Their isolation is a declaration of incompetence, not a sign of royalty.
When you look at your fellow human being and write them off as a shallow "normie," you are committing a crime against reason. You are assuming that because someone doesn't share your specific brand of online brain-rot, they do not possess a soul worth respecting.
I urge you to go get surprised. Go get close to people you've been categorizing from a distance. Just to find out if your assessment was accurate. You'll find out, it never is.
And the discovery of how wrong it was, is one of the most genuinely humbling and genuinely expanding things available to a human being.
That expansion is what depth actually feels like.
— Marcus | Stern Stoic
NOTE: If you find this Publication within your Spam or Promotion’s folder, drag the email to the Primary tab so you receive further publications directly into your Primary Tab.
PS: You've received this email because you subscribed to The Stern Stoic: Premium Publication Pass.