The inner self that we long to express is . . . modelled on an ideal found in our cultural environment. Whatever this identity may be . . . each is guaranteed to serve as an exemplar, and will possess the quality of exemplarity. Striving to be like our model, we will desire to become exemplary ourselves. This means seeking out admirers or disciples of our own, just as our model found a disciple in us. Unfortunately, others are not looking to become our emulators. On the contrary, they will want to retain their own hard-won identities and, propelled by the same dynamic, to attract emulators of their own. We end up in a sort of existential power struggle in which each wishes to emulate and none wants to emulate. Everyone wants to be the influencer, nobody the influenced: and so the public sphere becomes a theatre with all actors and no audience.

Moreover, we work in a limited-attention economy . . . , as most people broadcast more than they receive. Different aspiring exemplars must compete for the approval of a highly inattentive crowd. Social interactions become a complex, competitive game of pride, envy and ambition, where the stake is survival—survival . . . meaning retention of identity. Influencing others becomes integral to its goal. Not only does this lead to rivalry and conflict; it leads to frustration. What we wanted was our own identity. What we keep finding is somebody else's, and maintaining it feels less like self-expression than pandering to the crowd. [Those who threaten our identity] take the blame for a failure whose real explanation lies in the fundamental inconsistency of our aim. They remind us of the embarrassing arbitrariness of what we take to be essential—of our ontological unoriginality, our essential emptiness.

Anyone who escapes the ordinary categories and distinctions by which we define ourselves and each other indirectly threatens the identities of other people, who are likely to react with a violent impulse to reenvisage this defector from the identity regime. By refusing the distinctions of prestige and status, you threaten to reveal their arbitrariness to the world, and those whose very being depends on those distinctions will fight to prevent that, without even knowing what they are doing.