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by Tara Adams
Haunt Hunters App
There is a profound difference between being told how to feel by someone staring into a ring light and standing face-to-face with a story that demands you think for yourself.
These days, opening up a social media feed is like being trapped in a crowded room where everyone is shouting for your attention, while offering nothing of substance. We have traded the hard-earned craft of looking outward for a culture of looking inward.
The modern digital landscape is choked with influencers flapping their lips, treating every cultural touchstone, product, or news item merely as a backdrop for a selfie. They are not reporting; they are performing. And in that performance, the actual subject gets swallowed up.
The formula is always the same. An influencer makes themselves the inescapable focal point of every frame. The product, the art, or the event is just a prop held up next to a face, reduced to an aesthetic marker or a discount code. This approach lacks any real depth, insight, accountability, or originality. When your entire business model relies on keeping eyeballs glued to your personal brand, you cannot afford the luxury of nuance.
True reporting requires stepping back, getting out of the way, and letting the facts or the subject speak for themselves. An influencer can never do that because, to them, the story is always just a vehicle for themselves.
Contrast that with the tactile, grounding world of physical media, traditional journalism, photojournalism, and physical works of art.
Holding a heavy, ink-stained newspaper feature, studying the framing of a single, decisive moment captured by a photojournalist on film, spinning a vinyl record from cover to cover, or standing before a physical painting opens doors that algorithms keep firmly locked. These mediums demand active participation. They give you the space to wander, to question, and to form your own conclusions. They do not hold your hand or tell you what reaction to drop in the comments.
Physical works of art and rigorous reporting respect your intelligence. They carry the weight of real labor, the kind of work that involves traveling to a beat, verifying facts, sitting through tedious public meetings, or spending months in a darkroom or a studio. That sort of dedication builds an institutional memory and a standard of accountability that a three-minute vertical video can never replicate.
When everything becomes about personal branding, culture flattens out into a series of hot takes and unearned authority. But when we invest our time in physical art and journalism that actually looks at the world instead of a front-facing camera, we reclaim our ability to think critically. We stop consuming content and start engaging with reality.
