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The identity crisis is older than social media
Also today: what “being yourself” actually means and 17 little ways to make life easier.
Greg Sullivan
September 21, 2026 • Est. Reading Time: 3 minutes
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde
Today we’re working at both ends of the human condition. Kenneth Andrew Andres Leonardo digs into why philosophers have been arguing about authenticity for centuries, then Tod Perry brings us back down to Earth with 17 ridiculously useful life hacks.
Internet
The struggle to “be yourself” is much older, and weirder, than the algorithm.
More than 9 in 10 Gen Z respondents in one survey said being authentic and true to yourself was extremely or very important. I think that’s something most of us would agree with at first blush. But then comes the follow-up. What does “being yourself” actually mean?
People were spiraling about this long before Instagram bios and AI-generated everything. In this story by Kenneth Andrew Andres Leonardo, philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Martin Heidegger wrestle with what happens when society pressures us to perform, conform, and lose track of who’s underneath. Basically, the identity crisis has been beta-testing for centuries.
Rousseau worried about people hiding behind social masks. Heidegger described what happens when we live according to everyone else’s expectations in an even more unsettling way. Their ideas raise a surprisingly current question about how we think and how generously we interpret other people: Is authenticity actually a virtue, or does “just be yourself” need an asterisk?
I chose the file name “SeaCritter.jpg” because GOOD reader Steven J just called it “La Jolla Shores Nature” and… I don’t know what this is. I think it’s a seal, right? Or is it a sea lion? I’m sure I could Google it, but one of you will probably tell me. Ha! Love the emotion in our subject and the composition. And I can swear if I close my eyes, I can hear it too!
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Which part of everyday life most desperately needs a cheat code?We have technology. Why is any of this still hard? |
Last Week's Results
In Friday's issue, we shared the story of Forty-Cal finding his way home after 11 years.
And we asked: How would your pet greet you after 11 years apart? A slow sniff, then total meltdown took the top spot at 45.7%. Honestly, after 11 years, a little emotional chaos feels earned.
Full-body wiggle, zero hesitation (32.9%)
A slow sniff, then total meltdown (45.7%)
Polite tolerance, like a distant relative (5.5%)
My cat would ask where I've been and then walk away (15.9%)
Life Hacks | Courtesy of Upworthy
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17 life hacks that work so well it’s stunning that more people don’t know them | ||
People have discovered some pretty cool tricks to make everyday life easier. | ||
By Tod Perry | ||
Love it or hate it, or love it and hate it, the Internet is a place of creation and destruction. It’s where people come together to share ideas and collaborate to make a better world. It’s also the destination of choice for those who like to sow chaos and contribute to the gradual unravelling of civilized society. In this article, we aim to focus on the positive side of the Internet by sharing one of the newest rounds of life hacks, which are seriously simple ways to make your life easier. | ||
Tech writer Danny O’Brien coined the term “life hack” in 2004 to describe software-related tricks that developers used to make their lives easier. “Modern life is just this incredibly complex problem amenable to no good obvious solution,” O’Brien told Lifehacker in 2005. “But we can peck around the edges of it; we can make little shortcuts. And once you point out that everyone does that, once you coin the term, it’s really easy to pile a whole of lot of shared behaviors into one neat pile.” | ||
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Money
This is the kind of revenge fantasy Hollywood would reject for being too on-the-nose.
Imagine the pitch meeting. A regular couple buys their dream home in Florida with cash. No mortgage, no bank, nothing. One day, Bank of America foreclosed on it anyway, having confused them with someone else entirely. The couple tries calling. They write letters. They get a lawyer, get the foreclosure reversed, and a judge orders the bank to pay their legal fees. The bank ignores that, too.
So our heroes do something most of us have only fantasized about while on hold with customer service. They foreclose on the bank.
A studio exec would pass on this script for being too cathartic. Too tidy. Too "guy at the bar tells you about his cousin." And yet, in this story by Adam Albright-Hanna, every word of it actually happened to Warren and Maureen Nyerges. There are court records. There are sheriff's deputies. There is a moving truck.
On September 21, 1937, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was published in Britain, introducing readers to Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Gollum, and the world of Middle-earth. The book was an immediate success, and its popularity convinced Tolkien’s publisher to ask for a sequel, a request that eventually grew into The Lord of the Rings and helped establish modern fantasy as a major literary genre.
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Until tomorrow, be true to the truest you you know.