How We're All Becoming Products

i've been noticing something here in Utah that i have been struggling to fully understand. You see it everywhere, at the nice hotels, the upscale shopping centers, even just walking around certain neighborhoods. i started mentally counting the percentage of people who had obvious plastic surgery. Not subtle work, but the over-the-top kind that screams "I'm trying to become someone else."

i shared this observation with a friend of mine and he said, “Everyone is regressing to the mean. They all had the same archetype they are chasing. The same face, the same body, the same everything. Like walking through a factory of human clones.” i guess there is even a running joke about it, i’ve heard my daughter call it having the "Utah face" where all the moms have identical body shapes, facial features, hairstyles, even hair color. You can tell they've had the exact same procedures done.

That observation happened the same week i posted something controversial on my newsletter. i called out what I saw as fascist behavior from our current administration, using the National Guard against protesters for the first time in decades not to protect them, but to intimidate them. Some people unsubscribed. That's fine. But it got me thinking about authenticity, conformity, and why so many of us are afraid to be ourselves.

Then i saw a LinkedIn post that crystallized something for me. Someone responding to all the political outrage online by saying, essentially, "I don't know enough about politics or finance to have an opinion, so I'm staying out of it. Here's a picture of my cute wife and dogs instead."

That's when this all started to make sense to me. We're dealing with three different types of conformity and they're all serving the same master.

Physical Conformity: Manufacturing Insecurity

The “Utah Face” isn't random. When everyone is chasing the same physical archetype, somebody's getting rich. The plastic surgery industry doesn't want diverse beauty standards, they want everyone chasing the same narrow ideal because that's scalable and profitable.

Think about it. If beauty was truly diverse and personal, how would you sell standardized procedures? How would you manufacture the insecurity needed to drive people to literally reshape their faces and bodies?

Physical conformity creates predictable markets. It turns your body into a product that needs constant optimization, constant fixing, constant upgrading to match whatever template is currently profitable.

Intellectual Conformity: The Engagement Trap

Then there's the social media blueprint, don't talk politics, don't be controversial, optimize for engagement, follow the formula. This turns us all into the same fucking person, chasing the same metrics, avoiding anything that might rock the boat.

Here's what i find insidious about it, when everyone follows the same content strategy, algorithms can more easily categorize and serve your content. Advertisers get "safe" environments. Controversial or challenging ideas get suppressed not through censorship but through economic pressure.

Your authentic voice becomes a liability because it's unpredictable. The system doesn't want you to think or speak as yourself, it wants you to be a content generation unit optimized for engagement so it can sell more ads.

And yes, you might get fewer followers initially when you speak your truth. But the ones who stay? They're actually there for you, not for some manufactured version of what you think they want to hear.

Moral Conformity: The Privilege of Neutrality

This brings me to that LinkedIn post. When someone with privilege says, "I don't know enough to have an opinion," what they're really saying is "I have the luxury of not caring about this because it doesn't affect me."

That stance, treating neutrality as virtue, is only available to people who aren't directly threatened by the outcomes. It's the ultimate privilege, the ability to opt out of caring about injustice because you're not the one being brutalized.

But this moral conformity serves the same system as the other two. When people with resources and platforms stay silent, the status quo gets preserved without having to be actively defended. Those being harmed remain isolated from potential allies. Business continues uninterrupted.

The system avoids the disruption that comes from people actually acting on their conscience.

The Real Master: Turning Humans Into Products

All three conformities serve the same end goal of transforming people from autonomous human beings into predictable products.

Your body becomes a market for standardized modifications. Your mind becomes a content unit optimized for engagement metrics. Your conscience gets subordinated to economic considerations.

The genius of it is that it doesn't feel like oppression. It feels like optimization. Success. Being smart about business.

But in the process, we lose something, we lose the ability to look at ourselves in the mirror and recognize who we see. As my friend said, so many of us have become "an archetype of 100 other people that came before us."

The Alternative

i'm not willing to be that person. i'd rather write for myself and attract people who actually want to hear what i have to say than chase some algorithm-friendly version of what i think will get engagement.

i'd rather risk losing subscribers and followers by calling out injustice than stay silent while people suffer because speaking up might hurt my business.

And i'd rather age naturally and look like myself than chase some manufactured ideal of what i'm supposed to want to look like.

Because at the end of the day, we have to live with ourselves. We have to look in that mirror and recognize the person staring back. And when our time comes, when we're on our deathbed or people are gathered at our funeral, how many of those followers who loved our carefully optimized content are going to be there?

Fucking none of them.

So why are we working so hard to become archetypes for people who don't actually give a shit about us?

Life's too short to get to the end and realize all we did was follow someone else's blueprint. The world needs more people willing to be authentically, unapologetically themselves, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it costs followers, even when it hurts the bottom line.

Because that's how real change happens. Not through perfectly optimized content or carefully managed brands, but through real humans having the courage to stand up and say what needs to be said.