When Awareness Becomes a Weapon
The cost of confusing trend fluency with intelligence and integrity
There is a difference between awareness and fluency.
I feel it every time someone assumes I’m unaware of a trend I’ve chosen not to follow, a term I haven’t adopted, or the most current economic or political event I’ve explicitly chosen to ignore for the sake of my sanity. It’s not that I’m out of touch. It’s that I’m not playing the same game.
And yet in today’s social economy, trend fluency has become something more than surface—it’s become a metric. A shortcut. A stand-in for intelligence, integrity, and moral legitimacy. And the more connected we become, the more dangerous that shortcut gets—not just for people like me, but for anyone whose rhythm, language, or depth doesn’t match the algorithmic now.
There’s a performative loop embedded in modern discourse—a kind of real-time filter for social belonging. Who knows the right words? Who shared the right take, fast enough, loud enough? Who speaks the right moral dialect?
We’ve turned fluency in the latest conversation—whether it’s cultural, political, or aesthetic—into a shorthand for understanding. It gets praised as intelligence and celebrated as ethical growth.
But what it really reflects, most of the time, is exposure and response rate. Not depth. Not integration. Not character.
This isn’t just about gatekeeping as a fringe behavior. It’s become foundational, systemic. Social knowledge is no longer just something we acquire; it’s something we’re expected to constantly perform. And the moment we stop, fall behind, or opt out—we risk being seen as suspect.
The fallout lands hardest on those already pushed to the margins.
For people without constant online access, or those navigating different cultural or linguistic contexts, or anyone whose cognitive tempo doesn’t match the firehose of daily discourse, this system doesn’t just leave them behind. It casts them as lesser. Less informed. Less evolved. Less worthy of a seat at the table.
For me, and for many neurodivergent people, the issue goes deeper still. Autistic and otherwise divergent folks often process in nonlinear, layered, or delayed ways. We might arrive at deeper insight—just not on your clock. And when that rhythm doesn’t match, it’s not just misunderstood. It’s dismissed.
Even within the neurodivergent community, I’ve seen how fluency bias reinforces harmful hierarchies. Those who perform the “right” kind of awareness get propped up as the articulate ones, the thoughtful ones, the safe ones. The rest of us—those who process less conventionally through pattern, presence, discomfort—get flattened. Misread. Sometimes even rejected by our own peers.
But let me be clear: this isn’t a uniquely autistic problem. It’s a systemic one. The examples I know best just come from where I live.
You’d think neurodivergent spaces would be immune to this kind of performative filtering. But the truth is, we’re not. If anything, some of us have learned to play the game more strategically—out of necessity.
There’s pressure to be the “right kind” of ND. To be articulate enough, palatable enough, politically fluent enough. I’ve felt it in my own writing, in my own identity. The internal whisper: Say it the way they want it said. Signal the right kind of growth. Don’t make them uncomfortable.
But that pressure doesn’t just silence. It fragments.
We end up reproducing the same dynamics we critique elsewhere. Rewarding fast takes over slow insight. Celebrating presentation over process. Holding each other to an impossibly polished standard that no actual human can meet—especially not one processing from the inside out.
This pressure fractures connection. It makes us suspicious of each other. And it makes authenticity feel like a liability.
This isn’t just a community problem or a cultural glitch.
It’s a human pattern caught in the machinery of modern tech.
Social media rewards speed, repetition, and confidence. Not depth. Not doubt. Not nuance. And over time, we start mistaking those qualities for truth.
The danger isn’t just in how this flattens the marginalized. It’s also in how it isolates the center. People who succeed in this system—who get praised for their fluency and performative clarity—aren’t necessarily more connected. In many cases, they’re more trapped. Emotionally, culturally, intellectually.
Because when performance becomes your baseline, you lose the freedom to stumble.
To shift. To rethink.
You become a brand of yourself. And brands don’t get to be uncertain.
There’s nothing wrong with being aware. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do right, say right, be right. But when rightness becomes a signal instead of a process, we all lose something.
We lose the people who don’t fit the mold. We lose the patience for nonlinear growth. We lose the chance to see what’s actually underneath the performance.
If we want to move forward—together—we need a different kind of integrity. One that values intention over velocity. Substance over fluency. One that recognizes that wisdom doesn’t always speak in trending hashtags, and that real intelligence often arrives too slowly to go viral.
That kind of shift doesn’t just protect the marginalized. It frees the rest of us too. ∞