Does relatability necessarily have to mean brokenness?

Does being “vulnerable” mean only sharing our pain?

Everywhere I look lately, “relatability” seems to have become synonymous with brokenness.

Scroll your feed and you’ll see it — the influencer talking about her “rock bottom” burnout moment. The founder opening a post with “I cried in my car today.” The speaker starting their talk with a self-deprecating confession.

It’s not that these moments aren’t real or important. The most certainly are real and important.

But I’ve started to notice something: we’ve made brokenness the primary way we signal humanness.

And I’m not sure that’s serving us anymore.

There was a time when revealing your imperfections online was revolutionary.
It cut through the glossy veneer of “everything’s fine!” and made room for truth.
But somewhere along the way, signaling our messiness became the only acceptable form of authenticity.

But here’s what I’m wondering, and what I propose as our thought experiment this week: