Is “Packaging” Our Lives Burning Us Out?
- Sean
- Dec 4
- 4 min read
The pressure to package every moment — soft life brunches, curated healing journeys, effortless hustle — is quietly exhausting a generation. Young Nigerians aren’t just tired from work; they’re burnt out from performing a version of life that’s always “on” for reels and timelines. Take for instance, the global Wabi-Sabi pivot toward imperfect authenticity is colliding with Nigeria’s performance economy, and that tension is producing a new, quiet burnout.
Wabi-Sabi appears in this piece only as a reference point — a contrast that helps show how global authenticity trends collide with our own pressure to constantly package life.
The new unpaid emotional labour
Making your life look calm has become a job with no pay. From morning routines filmed in slow motion to weekend flex reels, people choreograph peace and package it for audiences. That curation — the planning, staging, and emotional editing — is unpaid labour. It costs time, energy, and the permission to actually rest. Social feeds reward staged calm; platforms amplify it.
When every dinner, sleep-in, or therapy win is an asset to be posted, the line between being and performing blurs. Creators and everyday users alike report feeling obligated to turn private relief into public content. That obligation makes rest transactional: you either trade your quiet for likes, or you hide the mess and feel like you’re failing both at living and at broadcasting living. This is not hypothetical — the Wabi-Sabi trend gaining traction online is explicitly framed as a reaction to that exact exhaustion.
Wabi-Sabi vs. the Lagos flex (Packaging)
Globally, Wabi-Sabi — the idea that imperfection is beautiful — is all over feeds as a counterweight to glittering perfection. Gen Z creators are leaning into messy desks, unfiltered selfies, and “off-center” shots that say: we don’t have it all together, and that’s okay. The soundbites and viral audio supporting this shift make vulnerability feel marketable in a different way: honest, not aspirational.
But in cities like Lagos, the culture of weekend flex and aesthetic living runs deep. Flex culture isn’t only about money — it’s about safety, status, and social capital. A perfectly curated birthday brunch or a staged villa weekend signals something important in networks where impressions carry economic and social weight. So while Wabi-Sabi invites sloppiness, Nigerian social economics often demands packaging.
The result? A clash: a desire for authenticity that’s punished by the reward mechanics of local social scenes.
When looking “put-together” becomes exhausting
Here’s the quiet cost: people rehearse calm. They replace messy rest with staged calm. That looks like a reel of someone smiling while a caption talks about “self-care,” when behind the scenes they’re anxious, under-rested, and prepping the next post. Two recent viral reels — one satirically captioned “Born to live a soft life forced to hustle,” and another framing soft life as “peace of mind” rather than luxury — show both sides of the same coin: the fantasy and the labour behind it. Those posts trended because they resonated — people see themselves in both the performance and the yearning.
Burnout from this kind of labor is stealthy. It doesn’t always look like missed deadlines or plummeting productivity; it looks like exhaustion that follows a perfectly edited Saturday reel. People report feeling hollow after the applause, numb when it’s over, and constantly anxious about the next thing to post.
That’s emotional debt: the more you package, the more you owe your followers — and the less you have for yourself.
Why authenticity is catching on (and what it costs)
The Wabi-Sabi movement’s popularity isn’t just aesthetic — it’s adaptive. Young people are tired of maintaining impossible continuity between their curated persona and their messy reality. Studies and youth reports show Nigerian young people are digitally native, trendsetting, and increasingly vocal about mental health — all factors that make the authenticity pivot both understandable and overdue.
Still, going “unfiltered” isn’t risk-free in a context where curated content opens doors (jobs, partnerships, social leverage). Choosing authenticity can mean fewer likes today and more vulnerability tomorrow. For many, the question becomes: can we afford to be honest when an edited life often pays?
Toward a less performative life
If Wabi-Sabi’s promise is sincere, it’s not a trend to exploit; it’s a practice. A few pragmatic shifts help:
Accept small, visible imperfections. Post a messy plate; post the post-therapy slump. Let followers adjust.
Stop treating rest as content. Rest without a camera is still valid.
Reclaim boundaries: decide what parts of life are for screens and what parts are for self.
Creators should normalize the economics: disclose when content is staged and value the labour that goes into it.
“Authenticity isn’t a new aesthetic — it’s permission to be unfinished.”
“Burnout isn’t only about what we do; it’s what we perform.”
Young Nigerians are caught between two competing economies: the attention economy that pays for polished packaging, and a human economy that needs imperfect rest. Wabi-Sabi’s rise signals a cultural craving — not for theatrics, but for relief. The challenge is structural: until platforms and local social rewards stop valuing only the shiny, people will keep trading real rest for staged calm. If we want fewer exhausted smiles in our timelines, we’ll have to learn to like the mess — not just the edited version of it.
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