you need to protect your own privacy 🌀 self-surveillance, transparency and the inner life

Summary

Nina Montagne argues that constant online visibility, algorithmic recommendations, and self-monitoring can flatten our sense of self. When we measure ourselves through productivity, followers, health stats, or other external metrics, we may lose touch with the uncertain, private inner life that allows us to change, imagine, and feel hope. Privacy, she suggests, is not only about hiding information: it gives our personalities and desires room to develop before they are explained, categorized, or turned into content.

The video does not call for abandoning the internet. Online spaces can help marginalized people explore identity and find community, especially when offline life is unsafe or isolating. Instead, it asks viewers to notice how platforms encourage performance and self-surveillance, and to protect room for less predictable ways of being.

Key self-care and reflection strategies

• Make space for solitude and quiet. Resist the automatic urge to reach for a phone, headphones, or a show. Allow unfilled moments for attention and reflection.
• Keep some experiences private. Not every feeling or meaningful moment needs to be shared or translated into a story. Some experiences may lose complexity when immediately explained or made public.
• Ease up on self-surveillance. Question constant tracking of steps, sleep, heart rate, productivity, and online engagement, especially when the numbers start to define how you feel about yourself.
• Trust inner awareness alongside external evidence. Listen to your body, feelings, and desires rather than relying exclusively on algorithms, metrics, or other people’s approval to tell you who you are.
• Allow uncertainty and change. You do not need a fully coherent, consistent identity or a fixed life plan. Being unfinished, inconsistent, or surprising can leave room for growth.
• Treat creativity as exploration. Writing, art, music, and other creative practices can help people encounter desires and possibilities that are not yet easy to explain.
• Take risks and remain open to new paths. Change involves uncertainty and the possibility of failure, but the speaker sees this willingness as part of feeling fully alive.
• Do less when constant output becomes draining. Montagne concludes that resisting the pressure to always produce, optimize, or demonstrate results can help preserve attention for inner life.
• Use online spaces thoughtfully. The internet can enable experimentation and connection, but private platforms often prioritize profit and visibility. The video also cautions against assuming that going offline is equally safe or accessible for everyone.
• Nurture hope and imagination. The future is not predetermined; imagining and collectively building alternatives can be a source of resilience and agency.

The video’s central message is to respect the right to remain partly unknown—even to yourself. Protecting that space can make it possible to be surprised by who you become.

Presenters and sources

Presenter: Nina Montagne

People and works discussed or quoted: Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Lowry Pressly, The Right to Be Forgotten; Hannah Arendt; Anton Chekhov, “The Kiss”; Werner Herzog; Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure; Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism; Clarice Lispector; Virginia Woolf; Viktor Frankl; Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope; José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia; Audre Lorde; Christopher Bollas.

Sponsored resource mentioned: Skillshare, including a creative documentary course by Susan Orlean.