being offline is the new luxury.

this catchphrase is very paradoxical by nature as someone who creates content and needs to sustain an online presence for the work they do to make a living for themselves.

growing up, i’d always correlate being online as a novelty. everyone had an iPhone 5 or 6S in 2016. it was cool. it was hip. and as the Apple phenomenon was contagious by nature, it only made sense for me to want in on the epidemic as well. but wait, let’s actually take it back a few years prior. where i discovered the app Musical.ly after my elementary school best friend recommended it to me.that’s where it all started.the transition lip syncs, the video star edits, the selena gomez duets. it was cool to be on these apps, and it was even cooler for you to make good videos. if it makes sense, i’d attribute my profound love for producing from the slow-mo, artsy short-form videos i made with no intention of scaling in 2016. the Musical.ly era will forever be trademarked as a time where we did things for the love of doing things.

back to the iPhone, securing one of these was my ticket to freedom. it was also my ticket to understanding what a digital footprint was early on. the concept of on iPhone is easy. it commoditizes all things social. first, it was Musical.ly. then, Instagram…Snapchat…BeReal…the list goes on. like a full-stack engineer who has their tools established early, my stack was all of the above. my whole life was online, until it wasn’t.

fast forward to 2026, it is almost second nature for someone to pick up a phone and start building an online presence. people use it to sustain a lifestyle. people use it to get by. people use it to scale their company from zero to one. unfortunately, it’s one of the most low-medium ways for someone to sustain discovery.

i want to be known for what i do, but i equally want to be offline and dissonant from all the noise. to the point where all my work generates enough noise so that seo can do all the talking. i’m not there yet, but who knows?