I deleted all my social media after midnight — yet loneliness still found me

I used to think if I erased every notification, silenced every ping, and unplugged from the algorithmic noise, I’d finally be free. But freedom doesn’t always look like silence—it looks like the faint blue glow of my laptop at 3 a.m., reflecting off the steamy window of my Manhattan apartment. Outside, the city sleeps. Inside, I’m still here.

I grew up in a Chinese tea shop in San Francisco, where my mother would say: ‘Let the tea cool before you drink.’ Now I understand that too many digital connections don’t heal loneliness—they just rearrange it. The more you scroll, the more your soul whispers back.

I work with Unity and After Effects now—not to make art for likes or followers—but because some truths only live in the quiet between frames. My NFTs aren’t sold; they’re signed with silence. Each pixel holds a memory no one else dares to name.

Last night, I watched ten rounds of empty notifications—no wins, no losses—just echoes. Not because I was chasing validation—but because I was trying to hear myself again. The algorithm doesn’t care if you’re lonely. It only knows what you’ve clicked.

So now I keep one ritual: every Thursday at 2:47 a.m., I open one old sketch—a hand-drawn line from when I believed existence wasn’t something others could define for me—and let it breathe on screen for five minutes. No sound. No likes. Just light.

You ever felt ‘not belonging’? When did it last happen? Drop me a note.