Programmed Selves

Swipe, scroll, perform: but who are you when the screen goes dark? In a world where identities are filtered and captioned, gender is no longer just lived, it is staged. Why does visibility feel like both power and pressure? Why must identity be recognisable to be valid? This book explores the strange theatre of social media, where women are watched, men are hardened, and queer identities are both celebrated and scrutinised. Between algorithms and anxieties, it asks: are we expressing ourselves, or becoming what the platform expects?