The Urge to Shrivel Away (and die?)

The pervasive modern desire to disappear

“I just want to shrivel up in a ball and die” reads a Reddit post while TikTok is asking me if anyone has seen my waist. In a world of ceaseless connectivity, where every moment can be captured, shared, and scrutinized, there is a growing, paradoxical yearning that many feel but few articulate: the quiet desire to disappear. This sentiment is not simply about physical absence or evasion of responsibilities; it’s a deeper, existential impulse—a craving to retreat from the overwhelming demands of visibility, productivity, and societal expectations. The roots of this phenomenon are complex, intertwining personal psychology, cultural shifts, and technological advancements.

The digital age has ushered in an unprecedented era of exposure. Social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter have made it possible for millions of people to broadcast their lives in real-time. While this interconnectedness has its benefits, it also fosters a constant pressure to perform, curate, and appear relevant. A 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 37% of teenagers and young adults reported feeling overwhelmed by the need to post “perfect” content online, while 47% admitted that social media increased their anxiety about how others perceive them.¹

This unrelenting visibility can lead to a phenomenon psychologists call the "hyper-self-conscious state.” Living under the perceived gaze of others, even in moments of solitude, creates a sense of surveillance that intrudes on one’s ability to simply be. It’s no surprise, then, that many people fantasize about slipping away, to reclaim a sense of self beyond the glare of public scrutiny.

This modern desire to “shrivel away” is not always dramatic or overt. It can manifest in small, subtle ways, though usually with the same outcome: a movement of sorts. Someone who longs to leave, get out, disappear, is always an unhappy person.

An emptiness and distinct loneliness seems to inhabit the modern person. Social media platforms have redefined friendship for an entire generation. Institutions that once provided us with a sense of purpose and belonging have largely faded. The decline of Christianity, for instance, has left a void where a shared religious and cultural narrative once helped people find meaning and direction in life. Additionally, the expansion of our lives in general has played a role in fostering this sense of emptiness by eroding smaller communities and undermining the family unit, both of which have historically been essential in shaping one’s sense of self. We used to live in small communities, now we all hurry to the big cities, if we weren’t born in one already.

Il Gigante Osvaldo

Paradoxically, it is precisely this hollowness, this sense of emptiness, from which we want to shrink away. As Rollo May wrote in his book Man’s Search for Himself the hollow among us “are bound to become more lonely no matter how much they ‘lean together’; for hollow people do not have a base from which to learn to love.” In the modern world, it’s promised that this “leaning together” has been facilitated, all you have to do is send a friend request and you’ve made a new friend. And yet, this facilitation seems to have exacerbated our loneliness. Within the emptiness in our core, nothing can thrive, let alone love.

This emptiness finds new expressions today. Nietzsche’s warning of the “death of God” is perhaps more relevant than ever: the decline of unifying belief systems, whether religious or communal, has left individuals navigating a fractured landscape of meaning. Without a shared narrative to anchor our lives, many feel adrift, clutching at fleeting trends or superficial goals to fill the void.

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and existential psychologist, argued that this loss of meaning is not just a personal crisis but a societal one. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he describes modern people as trapped in an "existential vacuum," filling their lives with distractions to avoid confronting their lack of direction. Today, those distractions are endless, from the dopamine hits of social media to the pursuit of material success, yet they rarely satisfy the deeper yearning for connection and purpose.

The desire to disappear is not only about escaping others but about escaping oneself. Memory, an integral part of our identity, plays a significant role here. The digital era’s insistence on archiving (photos, videos, posts) has created an externalized memory bank that can feel suffocating. Revisiting past versions of ourselves, preserved online, can be highly uncomfortable. We are constantly confronted not only with who we were but also with how much we’ve changed, or, perhaps worse, haven’t.

As a writer, this longing to disappear often feels like a shadow that accompanies my ambition. I dream of publishing a novel that is celebrated, yet, paradoxically, I also fantasize about escaping the very visibility that success would bring.

Writing is an inherently isolating act — hours spent alone, immersed in imagined worlds — and this solitude can feel both liberating and suffocating. The division between craving recognition while dreading the exposure it entails creates a tension that’s difficult to resolve.

The pressure extends beyond the writing itself. Increasingly, publishers evaluate not only the quality of a manuscript but also the writer’s follower count and public presence. For many aspiring authors, this metric feels like a disheartening reminder that talent alone is no longer enough; visibility and marketability have become intertwined with artistic merit. On particularly reflective days, I fantasize about writing under a pseudonym, crafting novels that live and thrive without ever tying back to me. The anonymity offers a kind of purity, a focus on the work itself, untainted by the need to maintain a public persona. And yet, a part of me yearns for the acknowledgment, too, for the connection with readers who might see fragments of themselves in my work.

Joanna Concejo

This oscillation between visibility and invisibility, between ambition and anonymity, feels emblematic of modern life. Like the Steppenwolf, we inhabit both the wolf and the man, never fully at home in either. The digital era amplifies this duality, offering both the tools to share our work with the world and the overwhelming pressure to remain constantly present, endlessly producing, and ceaselessly visible.

As a society, how do we address this quiet yearning? I think one solution lies in cultivating spaces that allow for healthy withdrawal. Practices like digital detoxes and mindfulness, can help carve out moments of invisibility without abandoning our lives. On a broader scale, redefining success to prioritize well-being over constant productivity could alleviate the societal pressures that drive this urge.

Ultimately, the desire to disappear is a symptom of a deeper need for balance. It’s a reminder that while the world demands much of us, we owe it to ourselves to step back, to reclaim the quiet corners of our minds, and to remember that our worth is not measured by our visibility.

In a culture obsessed with exposure, “shriveling away” is not defeat. It’s a declaration: a refusal to be consumed by the noise, a reclamation of the self amid the chaos.

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/