The feed is full, but we’re all starving

There was a time when the internet felt like a conversation, messy, unpredictable, occasionally stupid, but undeniably human. What made it so wasn’t the technology; it was the chaos.

The digital world didn’t simply coexist with the analogue one; it collided with it, reshaped it, and gave it metaphors it didn’t know it needed. A tweet could spark a street protest. A YouTube vlog could turn an unknown teenager into a cultural compass. A Facebook post could reunite families across borders. And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, humanity found a new way of seeing itself.

Remember the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, when a silly dare became a global ritual of empathy? Or the way early Instagram wasn’t a curated gallery but a spontaneous scrapbook of burnt toast, stray dogs and unfiltered sunsets?

Even the cringiest moments had sincerity because no one was performing for an algorithm; we were performing for each other. The novelty wasn’t in virality; it was in discovery. The internet felt like overhearing a conversation in a café, not watching a brand jostle for attention on a megaphone-lined highway.

But novelty has a short half-life. The moment social platforms realised attention is currency, spontaneity died. What was once raw became optimised. What was once communal became competitive. What was once a playground became a pipeline.

Now it feels like a stadium where everyone is performing and no one is listening.

Because FOMO replaced strategy (‘our competitors are posting 12 reels a week’).Because it felt like all consumers lived here (‘if we’re not on social, do we even exist?’). Because, for a while, business did indeed rise here, with cheap CPMs, inflated engagement, and vanity metrics masquerading as market share. So social media turned into a conveyor belt: content, content, content. And in the noise, humanity slipped out quietly through the back door.

Social media turned from a window into our lives into a mirror that reflects only what the algorithm approves. And brands… well, brands became the best actors in this theatre of constant performance. They learned to dance for the algorithm, eight-second hooks, trendjacked audios, airbrushed authenticity packaged with a bow. And yet, something strange happened: the more perfect everything became, the less anyone cared.

Look at what happened when Apple dropped ‘The Greatest’, a film that didn’t scream “watch me,” didn’t chase a trend, didn’t bait the algorithm. It simply showed the world through the eyes of people with disabilities, and suddenly the feed felt human again. Or when Dove stopped selling soap and started dismantling toxic beauty standards, the ‘Real Beauty’ campaign cut through the noise not because it was clever, but because it was uncomfortably honest.

Even closer home, Facebook India’s ‘More Together’ campaign quietly reminded us what human-first digital storytelling really looks like. No AI. No personalisation engines. No data wizardry. Just a simple story about a lonely old man and a young stranger who decides to help him reconnect with people he thought he had lost forever.

The technology stayed in the background, barely visible, never boastful. What took centre stage was kindness. A girl notices an elderly man struggling with isolation, gives him the gift of connection, and in doing so, shows us that platforms don’t create meaning; people do.

That’s the kind of work that cuts through today’s performance-obsessed social landscape. Not because it is clever, but because it is true. It reminds us that human emotion is still the strongest distribution engine on the internet, one share, one comment, one act of empathy at a time.

This is the kind of narrative that belongs in the future of social: technology as the invisible enabler, humanity as the headline.

Chasing vapour

Meanwhile, the rest of the internet is busy chasing vapour. Every brand wants a viral reel, a trending sound, a moment in the spotlight. But virality is no longer a strategy; it’s a glitch. A by-product. A side-effect.

The real question is: what happens when the trend dies at 4 PM tomorrow? Most brands disappear with it. Because somewhere along the way, social media stopped being a destination and became just another distribution channel, a glorified pipe where content is pushed but rarely remembered.

The campaigns that survive the algorithm’s forgetfulness are the ones that remember something the algorithm never will: people don’t connect with content, they connect with truth.

Think of Nike’s ‘Dream Crazy’ with Colin Kaepernick, a gamble the data never would’ve greenlit. Think of Swiggy’s ‘Guilt-Free Menus,’ which didn’t scream for attention; it solved a real, lived tension. These weren’t posts engineered for retention; they were ideas engineered for relevance. And relevance is the one metric no dashboard can measure.

But agencies are facing a hard truth now. They spent a decade mastering the mechanics of performance, only to realise the machine no longer rewards it. Everyone is optimised. Everyone is polished. Everyone is playing the same game, and everyone is losing the same way. The only ones winning are those who stopped playing altogether.

There’s a question brands have avoided asking: If we stop posting tomorrow, would anyone notice? Would anyone care? The uncomfortable answer for most is ‘No.’ Not because they failed, but because they followed the rules too perfectly. They did everything the algorithm wanted, and nothing the audience needed.

The future belongs to brands that choose meaning over mechanics. Those willing to bleed a little honesty into their timelines. Those who build conversations instead of content calendars. Those who tell stories not because they perform well, but because they deserve to be told.

Here are the three simple steps to make “social” human again.

Replace content with conversations

Stop publishing. Start participating. The brands breaking through today aren’t the loudest; they’re the most responsive.

They behave like people, not billboards. A great example is Tinder India’s ‘Conversations Start Here’ initiative, where the brand didn’t promote itself; it amplified real stories of connection from real users, turning social media into a mirror instead of a megaphone. Social stopped feeling like advertising and started feeling like emotion again.

Build for meaning, not momentum

The algorithm rewards quantity. Humans reward quality. Brands need to pause and ask: Why does this deserve to exist?

The best recent example is The Times of India’s ‘The Times Out & Proud’ campaign, which celebrated real LGBTQIA+ stories by handing its platform to people whose voices were usually invisible, not through big data, but through big empathy. Impact came from truth, not trendjacking.

Create utility, not just visibility

Social media fatigue isn’t caused by too much content; it’s caused by too much content that solves nothing. Brands win when they become useful.

Zomato’s “Order for the Flood-affected” movement or MG Motor’s “Road Safety with Hector AI” didn’t chase virality; they created real-world value.

Utility → Trust → Loyalty.

Algorithms can amplify that; they cannot manufacture it.

Because at the end of the day, when the lights go off and the algorithm looks away, there’s only one question worth asking in this entire industry:

When the whole world is performing, who dares to be real?

—Nikhil Sharda, assistant vice president – marketing, The Marcom Avenue