Try this: Picture yourself completely alone. No cameras, no one watching.
What are you wearing in that image? How are you standing?
You’re still performing. Even in your own head, you can’t access an unperformed version of yourself.
I’m writing Project Mirror, a novel where people’s faces get software updates. Neural implants adjust bone structure in real-time. Beauty becomes subscription content. But the real question isn’t about technology. It’s about what happens when you become your own constant audience. When there’s no backstage because you’ve internalised the scrutiny.
We’ll sit with uncomfortable questions. Do you have a “phone face”? Can you remember the last time you did something with zero possibility of it becoming content? At what point does self-improvement become self-erasure?
I’ll read a scene where my protagonist discovers she’s been modified without realising it. Her employers told her the enhancements were professional tools. She’s starting to wonder what else they changed. Memory. Loyalty. The capacity to question.
Then we do an exercise: share the last thing you did that absolutely no one could ever know about. Most people can’t think of anything.
The UK has the highest beauty filter use in Europe. Cosmetic procedures are up, with clients bringing filtered photos as reference. Filter dysmorphia is a clinical diagnosis. We’re not heading towards algorithmic beauty. We’re building it.
We optimise our lives for documentation. Photograph meals, faces, experiences. But who decided what the ideal version looks like? And why are we all converging on the same answer?
Private thoughts don’t exist anymore. Not because someone’s listening. Because we’ve learned to pre-edit ourselves. You catch yourself thinking something and immediately wonder how it would sound aloud. The audience is inside your head.
You’ve felt that uncanny sensation of not being quite real. You’re suspicious everyone’s performing but can’t figure out what for. You work in beauty, tech, marketing and have questions you’re not supposed to ask. You’ve caught yourself adjusting your face in Zoom out of habit. You’re willing to sit with the possibility that we’ve fundamentally broken something about consciousness and haven’t noticed yet.
This isn’t for you if you want reassurance everything’s fine. You’re looking for solutions or life hacks. You need the conversation to resolve neatly. You think “just log off” solves a structural problem.
This isn’t a lecture. It’s people admitting something feels wrong about how we exist now, trying to articulate what.
The evening runs about 90 minutes. Reading from the manuscript, the uncomfortable exercise, open discussion. Expect genuine discomfort and questions without clean answers.
Fulham Library, Thursday 2 October, 5 pm
Free entry. RSVP required.
https://www.meetup.com/stories-surfaces-contemporary-literature-london/events/311321318
— Writer Julia Zolotova
