I read an essay titled On (Maybe) Being a Blank Flank. The term "blank flank" came from the show My Little Pony. A blank flank is a pony who hasn't found their purpose (or niche). The author summarizes her point well:
But humans aren't cartoon ponies, and we don't all discover a purpose in childhood or early adulthood. Sometimes our "cutie marks" appear later than that. Sometimes they change shape, or sometimes there's more than one. And maybe that's okay.
I'm not here to argue / disagree / concur; I read the post and had some thoughts. Here they are.
People become obsessed with finding their purpose. I wonder if the commonplaceness of the internet has exacerbated this problem. I think the internet has done so in two ways.
Lurkers / people scrolling through the internet are exposed to content creators. Content creators are there to create content. This is a job. They focus on a niche---maybe it's their main interest, it's whatever they've decided to focus. To gain an audience, they need a niche. To people lurking through a creator's posts, the creator's niche highlights the creator's purpose. Oh, [USER1] is someone who does [INTEREST1]. A content creator is known for their thing; that's how they've gained an audience in the first place. This makes people who have one niche seem more common than they really are. When you're lurking, and these focused content creators are all you see, your perception of reality is influenced by them.
Exposure to content creators can cause someone to forget how offline people behave. What about all the other people with jobs? What about the people who have passionless jobs? Content creators monetize what they love. They seem to be in seemingly endless supply. Take the offline guy who works in waste management (fancy way of saying he takes the trash off your curb). He might not love what he's doing, but he does it anyways. He needs the money. He'll have his own interests, but those interests aren't his career. He's doing what he needs to do to be able to do the things he wants to do.
Monofocused content creators are monofocused. They have one niche, and that's it. Offline people have multiple interests that they aren't going to smush together into one neat niche. They aren't in the business of marketing their niche, so they have no need to have a coherent niche. They have a set of interests. However, people who scroll through social media are exposed to a wider array of online people than offline people. This skews a lurker's perception: niche is the norm, multiple interests is not.
I also think the internet mutes users thoughts, which causes them to try fewer new things. Mindless scrolling is mindless; people who engage in mindless scrolling are thinking less than they would if they weren't mindlessly scrolling. Because of this, they aren't casually reflecting on their interests, values, and what they want out of life. These questions arise deliberately. Maybe a social media post asks them these questions. Maybe something in their real life happens that forces them to think about these questions. While they are asked these questions, they are thinking about these questions because they are being asked the question. Their abuse of mindless scrolling means the thought---what am I doing with my life?---and reflection on it crosses their mind less than it would if they weren't mindlessly scrolling.
Once a user is hooked on scrolling, it's hard for them to stop. Scrolling is their past-time. While they do new things, these things are insular: a new online thing, looking through content, content consumption and not creation. They try new content. They do not try new activities. Scrolling does not prompt someone to doodle, write a story, learn to knit; hell, the ease of scrolling makes scrolling more attractive than doing something new, because something new requires effort. Trying a new hobby might require commitment to purchasing new materials. Trying a new hobby can mean seeking out information. Trying a new hobby is deliberate (nay, serious!); this is the opposite of scrolling.
If someone infrequently partakes in new activities, they struggle to develop their interests. They're blinded by their consumption. They don't know what else is out there, and they're not trying it. Why should they, when a dopamine hit is one scroll away? Scrolling discourages new interests; "for you" pages recommend content based on what the user does like. They show the user content that's popular, and content they might like; they don't show them content without having a reason to believe the scroller will be interested in the content. Why show knitting content to a person who primarily watches sports (and vice versa)? "For you" pages deny how someone can be invested in two wildly different interests. Their lives must be neat, clean, sensible...algorithmic.
The internet pressures users into finding hyperspecific cutie marks. Exposure to influencers skews users' perception of what is normal. The way content is recommended worsens this skew in perception, as content recommendations try to fit users into an algorithmic niche. Scrolling through the internet dulls users' minds, making them less prone to discovering and developing their own interests. These factors exaggerate a commonplace sense of a lack of purpose. We need to spend less time online and spend more time engaging with reality. Only by deliberately doing and existing can we combat purposelessness.