GRWMs: Comfort of Exposure, Cost of Autonomy
You might have seen so many reels on ‘GRWM’ (‘Get-Ready-With-Me’) floating a lot on Instagram having above 50k likes on an average basis. Basically, styling your hair, choosing an outfit, and applying routine makeup while sharing personal stories would make anyone hooked for 30 seconds. Today, GRWMs are less about how you get ready; it’s more about who you are while you are getting ready. That’s why gossip and controversies have made ordinary people drawn along by this ongoing trend.
Unlike everyday users, Influencers, creators, stylists, fashionistas primarily use GRWMs as promotional reels, flaunting outfits and skincare must-haves for their lifestyle-focused audience. It is understandable, most of them serve as brand ambassadors, paid partnerships and smartly weaving brand promotions with GRWMs content to influence purchase decisions. But, why have non-creators become unsuspecting amplifiers of these trends? Why ordinary people are turning into unpaid influencers.
It’s so ironic how effortlessly these general viewers trade their intimate daily rituals for fleeting validation and, overlooking their quiet erosion of their own privacy.
These passive viewers have blurred the lines between private and performative. The four- room-walled isn’t a sanctuary anymore, it’s a stage. Privacy still exists physically (they are alone in the room), but the act is instantly compromised the moment the camera turns on, because the intended audience isn’t you in the mirror anymore, it’s the world.
The expression ‘digital privacy’ stands on the edge of being redefined. Instead of ‘being unseen’, privacy is now more like curating what parts of your ‘unseen self’ you are willing to display.
The evolution of zoomers’ digital ideology has become increasingly selective, whether shaped by metaverse or broader cultural shifts to convenience driven digital habits. It is evident that more people are finding comfort in ‘exposure’ rather than framing it as a ‘loss of privacy’. To them, ‘exposure’ feels like part of community, not intrusion. The skincare routines and outfits choices are no longer seen as ‘private’ but as ‘safe’ and ‘controlled expressions’.
In contrast to this, iGen uses digital spaces to experiment with their identity, curate personal aesthetics and shape how they are perceived while simultaneously signaling the alignment with the digital tribe via trends, styles and shared habits. Therefore, digital individualism is never truly isolated. It is always practiced within the collectivist ecosystem.
Does the ‘selfie generation’ really have control over their data or is it just their comforting narrative? Social media platforms don’t sell traditional products instead, they own and control the digital infrastructure. Their business model isn’t about selling goods and services but about collecting rent from everyone who uses it. These people forget the advertiser’s first principle that, ‘online, you are the main product’. Every click, like, share, scroll isn’t just an activity, it’s fresh data harvested and monetized.
For example:
Imagine the digital presence as a ‘playground’ with users as ‘children’.
And the playground gate is heavily guarded by giant people who control the entry.
Inside: Kids play freely, chat, laugh, and share whatever they like. But those giants quietly take notes about them ( what you like, who are your friends, what you eat, how you behave and everything that seems little and ordinary)
These ‘notes’ (data) are super valuable. The giant people trade them with candy sellers (advertisers) in terms of currency.
Meanwhile, the rules of this playground aren’t written openly but dictated by giant people’s secret machines (algorithm). These machines decide what is popular, who gets noticed, which is more shared…
So people need to discard this illusion of owning digital self-control on the platform. In practice, they do not give you a real platform-based self-regulation. What we often call ‘control’ is nothing more than an interface of limits, designed by platforms to make us feel autonomous while steering our behavior. Remember, you are not choosing freely; you are selecting from the menu someone else wrote.
Platforms brand this ‘disguise control’ as empowerment, but in concrete terms, you are tethered to systems that extract data, monetize attention and reinforce dependency.
This is where the concept of digital sovereignty becomes urgent. True sovereignty isn’t about toggling between privacy settings and pre-defined options, it is more about reclaiming the ownership of your digital presence from the centralized authorities.
The companies have turned privacy as a ‘product’ by packaging and selling to us as if it were a premium feature. The best example is Apple’s iCloud, on the surface, it is marketed as enhanced browsing privacy by hiding from both Apple and network providers. But here’s the catch, it is locked behind paid subscription. So privacy, in this case, is not treated as a fundamental right but as an upsell. You pay extra to prevent your own data being exploited.
By contrast, digital sovereignty as a right looks different. It is not a subscription plan or a convenience toggle. You don’t have to purchase the ability to control how your data travels across the web. Instead, the system itself would recognise your data as your property from the start, meaning your own digital trail by default. This would establish a more honest and balanced digital ecosystem.
However, demanding digital sovereignty in the digital capitalist society is like asking a fox to guard the henhouse. Those who profit from the data have no incentive to protect it. Digital capitalism is so deeply rooted, it conveniently turns people into a digitally passive consumer, selling distraction as entertainment, surveillance as convenience and dependency as progress. This is how the digital capitalism model silently inverts the digital sovereignty of people.
People have become modern day ‘digital serfs’, and while the idea of digital sovereignty seems urgent. In reality, it remains elusive, slippery and vague in execution. You have been caught in the grip of infrastructures designed to extract profit, and your dissent is buried in the layers of menus and obscure settings. Candidly speaking, it is your algorithmic obedience of people that is shaping our destiny. What we see, buy, believe is filtered by a profit-driven recommendation engine. The paradox of digital freedom is that tools meant to liberate us are also the tools that confine us and, until we consciously choose, we remain bound.
In the end, trends like ‘GRWMs’ mirror the primary struggle for humanity in the digital world; freedom versus control. Subservient state in the online world would lead towards self exploitation. So, the moment we stop questioning the system we rely on, we stop owing our digital lives. If you continue to run on autopilot, you would risk becoming a passive passenger influenced by the illusion of online empowerment within the system. Awareness is the first act of resistance, the only way to move from being the ‘product’ in the system to being ‘rightful owners’ of the digital selves.