Nonchalance keeps people at a distance; whimsy invites them in
By Chloe Halpin
In a world of curated feeds and carefully crafted captions, nonchalance has become a kind of social armor. When you don’t reveal everything, you create space for curiosity. You become a projection screen for other people’s fantasies and assumptions. That’s why the “quiet” person often draws more attention than the loud one. But lately, the performance of being effortlessly unbothered has started to feel less like a choice and more like a survival strategy.
With the rise of social media, we’ve learned to live as if we’re always being watched. That constant visibility has made us hyper-aware of how we’re perceived. The easiest way to avoid judgment is to appear as if nothing can touch you by being nonchalant. It can be hard to be authentic when you are constantly seeing new aesthetics, fashion trends, and the new beauty standard. So we resort to hiding our true selves to blend in.
We post “low effort” photo dumps. We create “effortless” outfits that took hours to plan. The goal isn’t to seem happy anymore, it’s to seem unaffected. There’s safety in looking like you don’t care too much about anything. But the obsession with appearing unbothered has come at a cost. Somewhere along the way, we lost our whimsy that makes us playful, imperfect, and, most importantly, human.
Whimsy is what makes you laugh too loudly at a joke or post a photo just because it made you smile, dancing in the rain, or texting first. Yet with the rise of social media and everything being public, whimsy has started to feel embarrassing. Excitement is uncool, and caring is a little desperate. The desire to seem nonchalant has seeped into everything. You can see it in fashion, in dating, in the way people talk online. There’s a shared understanding that vulnerability is a dangerous currency. If you care, you give someone leverage.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. While being nonchalant may seem cool or safe, it won’t make you feel. And isn’t that what we all really want? To post the picture we feel good in and not zoom into our every flaw so much so that we don’t see the beauty anymore. To laugh so loud that heads turn, to sing your favourite song, and dance in the rain.
I think it’s time we retire being “nonchalant” and bring back being loud and unapologetically “too much”. Instead of trying so hard to fit in, maybe we could put this effort into self-discovery, figuring out who we want to be. Something I always tell myself on days when I just want to blend into the background is that everyone has their own things going on. We are all lost, confused, and probably drowning in assignments. So instead of trying to blend in, just express yourself without fear, the right people will always stick around and love you for you.