How Social Media Rewires Identity

When I wrote the social media platform niknak into Superimposed, I wasn't inventing something new. I was extrapolating something that already felt inevitable.

The Performance Problem

Every platform asks you to perform a version of yourself. You choose what to share, how to frame it, which parts of your day are post-worthy and which disappear. Over time, that performance becomes the self you reach for first — not because you're being dishonest, but because the feedback loop is so immediate and so consistent that it starts to feel like evidence.

You post something. People respond. The response confirms the version of you that posted it. You become that version a little more.

What Ben Sees

In the novel, Ben watches his world change after onboarding to a new platform his company has partnered with. Subtly at first — the way he sees things, the way he deals with it, how he works. Then less subtly. Then not at all.

He can't tell if the platform is doing something to him or revealing something that was always there. That ambiguity was the point.

The Real-World Version

The research on this is not subtle. Studies on social comparison, identity fragmentation, and the psychological cost of curated self-presentation have been accumulating for years. We already know what heavy platform use does to how people perceive themselves relative to others.

What's less discussed is what it does to the private self — the version of you that exists when no one is watching. If you spend enough time performing, that version gets quieter.

Why I Wrote It This Way

I wanted the threat in Superimposed to feel plausible. Not a sci-fi premise you have to accept on faith, but something with roots in things you've probably already noticed in yourself or people you know.

The "impose" ability Ben acquires is extreme. The social media subplot is not.