If a post’s numbers set your mood for the night, strangers are running your thermostat.

Handing your mood to a number hands it to people who are not thinking about you at all. They scrolled past, and nothing about you changed in the hour you spent refreshing. The trouble is that the feedback arrives looking like a measurement, so it is easy to treat it as one. It is a count of thumbs, not a reading of your worth.

Try posting something this week and then leaving the app for the evening. Decide beforehand what you think of the thing you made, so an opinion is already in place when the numbers arrive. Notice how much of the night those first twenty minutes were taking.