You’ve seen the posts:

“Taking a break from social.”

“Gone hiking, no signal.”

“Not everything needs to be shared.”

They signal peace. Mystery. Boundaries. But they’re also... visible. Public declarations of invisibility. Which raises the question: when did privacy become performance?

In a world oversaturated with updates, silence is now strategic. Going offline isn’t just a break — it’s a flex. A statement of control, discipline, and digital discernment.

And ironically, it often gets more engagement than oversharing ever did.

We used to post to prove we were doing something. Now we post to prove we’re not.

“Logged off” is the new status symbol.

It whispers: I’m balanced. I’m grounded. I have a life beyond this feed.

But real privacy? That’s not something we announce. It’s something we inhabit.

What’s emerged instead is curated invisibility — where even our boundaries are aestheticized. Where deleting an app becomes content. Where silence is part of the strategy.

The very platforms we escape from are the ones we use to narrate our escape.

This tension — between wanting to disappear and needing to be seen disappearing — is part of a bigger loop.

We don’t just perform our identities online. We also perform our resistance to those performances.

This creates a strange hall of mirrors:

You share less, but still monitor how your “not sharing” is received.

You go private, but still check the likes on your “off-grid” post.

You unplug, but only after announcing it... on five platforms.

We’ve made privacy public. And that makes it feel... performative.

There’s nothing wrong with taking space, setting boundaries, or disappearing for a while. But maybe the next step is doing it without the announcement.

True privacy isn’t about hiding — it’s about not needing to explain.

When we stop performing privacy, we start practicing it.