The Thought Leadership Complex is Burning Us Out

Coming from someone who thinks about quitting social media every day and still shows up anyway.

There’s a heavy feeling that’s been looming, and if you spend any amount of time on social, you probably feel it too. It’s not burnout exactly. It’s not even boredom. It’s something worse, I think. A slow dissipation of meaning. A creeping hollowness. A fatigue that comes from watching the same recycled advice, the same performative “thought leadership,” and the same personal brand gymnastics play out day after day, like some bad improv troupe that doesn’t know when to leave the stage.

We’re living in a golden era of vapid content (YAY!). Which, in my mind, looks like a self-serve buffet of bullshit masquerading as value. Everyone’s an expert now. Everyone’s a founder. Everyone’s giving you the five things you must do to win. And if you don’t like it? The algorithm will make sure you see it anyway.

This is the part where someone usually says, “It’s just the game. Play it or get left behind.”

And lately, I’ve been leaning towards, “But what if we don’t?

I’ve noticed myself pulling back from sharing for the sake of it. Not because I have nothing to say, the earth would sooner freeze over before that happens, but because I don’t want to say things I don’t believe. And that’s a harder line to walk than it sounds when the entire system rewards volume, consistency, and confidence (even if it’s unearned). There’s something backwards about a world that expects you to post with authority on Tuesday, and then turn around and say something “authentic” on Wednesday like your entire identity is some well managed brand asset.

I work in social media, and I think about quitting it every single day.

From the consumer side, it’s really exhausting watching people try to out-brand each other into oblivion. “Just because you can” has replaced “maybe you shouldn’t.” And yet here we are: eyes glazed, still scrolling, still tapping, never-gonna-give-you-up way of existing. The algorithm doesn’t care if the content is good. It only cares if it keeps you here.

From the professional side, it’s harder to explain. There’s this low-grade fraudulence that burrows and hums underneath everything. It’s a kind of constant tension between wanting to be helpful and feeling like you're accidentally complicit in a system that rewards shortcuts and shaming…and then getting masked as motivation. And if you’re a person who actually gives a shit? Someone who wants to do this work without selling out your values? Then this is the kind of thing that wears you down by wrapping it’s virtual fingers around the your throat and tightening the squeeze until every ounce of that motivation is smothered out of your sparkling eyes.

This is just a vent. My friends would probably say that it’s more like a signal flare that I’m tossing into the void with the hopes that someone else sees it and thinks, yep, same.

Here’s what I know:

• I don’t want to create for the sake of “staying top of mind.”

• I want to create when I have something real to say.

• I want to share the “how,” not just the “what.”

• And I want to do it without treating my own voice like a commodity.

I know that’s not how the game is played. But I think the game is rigged somehow.

Maybe we’re not supposed to win at it. Maybe we’re supposed to build something else.

Because the real takeaway that I’ve learned from ingesting all the content that’s been thrown at me from people sharing their hottakes about personal brand building, marketing, conferences, and what have you.

People are craving depth. Not constantly. Not every post. But sometimes. And when they find it, they hold onto it. Not because it was optimized, but because it was true.

Ladies, gents, and others—we don’t have to live like this. We can opt out of the performance. We can choose slowness. We can make fewer things, better. We can be generous without being prescriptive. We can be helpful without being performative.

We can give ourselves (and each other) permission to pause, to question, to not be content machines.

And when we do have something to say? At least there’s hope that it’ll actually mean something.