The Borrowed Tongue
I have started to notice something strange when I speak. I have started to catch myself using a lot of generic words, and sometimes I am no longer sure if the thought was ever mine to begin with. This is not a comfortable thing to admit, especially for someone who makes a living with words. But it is the truth, and I think it is happening to more of us than we want to say out loud. We are losing the ability to think in our own voice. Not because we have become stupid. But because we have become efficient. We collect. We scroll. We assemble. A line from a tweet here. A framing from a caption there. An opinion that felt exactly right because someone else had already done the hard work of forming it. And we move on, fluent and fast, never quite stopping long enough to ask, 'But what do I actually think?' I don't think social media created this problem, but it perfected the conditions for it. The architecture rewards familiarity. What spreads is what alre...
