I've ideologically gone from Hilary Duff to David Horowitz in four years

Sorry if I've been a bad vibe lately

How sweet the irony. I spent years parading as the virtuous, enlightened one, meticulously curating my life to align with every "right" cause. I’d scoff at those who weren’t politically woke enough, all while I surrounded myself with people who’d never questioned their beliefs, whose idea of diversity was scrolling through Instagram memes that fit their echo chambers. Yet, the moment I started questioning the narrative, I was exiled. I was the villain now—the person who dared to ask why “our side” was burning with so much righteous hatred.

You can’t imagine the surprise of finding that my most self-righteous, left-wing friends, those who claimed to be against systems of oppression, were quick to silence me, cancel me, and then—well, then they got back to flexing their virtue. They lived in their hollow echo chamber, where their ‘woke’ ideas were just that—ideas. They weren’t backed by any real-life sacrifice or any understanding of the real suffering outside their social media feeds. I watched as they basked in their unearned moral superiority, comfortable in the luxury of condemning others while living lives of indulgence. They didn’t care for actual justice; they just wanted to control the narrative and remain untouched by the messiness of life.

At some point, I couldn’t ignore the grim reality. These were people who were so disconnected from any meaningful human struggle that they could sit comfortably in their ivory towers, their political correctness more about power than principle. They wore their luxury beliefs like badges of honor—meant to show how ‘enlightened’ they were while the actual problems they claimed to care about remained untouched. Their ‘activism’ was little more than a marketing tool to enhance their personal brand, with the rest of society merely background noise to their self-congratulatory lives.

I couldn’t stomach it anymore. I stripped everything away—the clothes, the curated image, the social media performative activism—and for the first time, I felt the rawness of reality. I embraced Christianity not as a trend, but as an anchor in a world full of hollow virtue-signaling. I sold off everything that symbolized my past life of superficiality. The minimalist monk look wasn’t some Instagram aesthetic—it was a desperate attempt to find meaning in a life devoid of it.

What followed was nothing short of a mental and emotional detox. The moment I stopped living for the applause, I could hear the truth beneath all the noise: my former ‘friends’ were drowning in self-deception. I came to see them as spiritually bankrupt—clutching at trendy beliefs, yet failing to confront the depths of their own flaws. They were Dorian Grays—forever trapped in an endless, self-indulgent cycle of pretending to be more than they were. They wielded their moral authority like a weapon, but their real battle was with themselves.

But I was different now. I was no longer looking to be liked. I was building something that mattered, that had substance. And the more I started to understand what truly mattered, the more the spectacle of their lives seemed laughable. How had I ever admired such people? How had I ever been so blind to the emptiness of their ‘enlightened’ lives?

Now, I find myself navigating new territory—surrounded by people who are unapologetically real. Some are still scraping by, others have found peace in the simplicity of life. None of them need my approval, and none of them would ever join in the endless cycle of virtue-signaling. They don’t have time for it. It’s too exhausting, too fake. And honestly, I feel the same.

I still care deeply about social justice, but now, I approach it with a more grounded perspective. I do the work to educate myself, diving into research rather than blindly following the experts. I focus on making tangible changes in my community that I can control. I’ve realized that the best way to create change is by improving what’s within my reach, empowering myself to take action where it matters most, and staying hopeful that, through consistent effort, I can transform the things I don’t like in my own life.