This time of year in Los Angeles always feels like the official reopening of everyone’s personality. There’s a universal optimism in the air right before June, like the entire city upped their Prozac at the exact same time. It also marks the return of the “Summer of Outside / SOO” mindset (courtesy of Tinx).

And if you’re not a nature lover, don’t worry. The overall theme is simply encouraging people to stop rotting in bed and start saying yes to life again, no matter where that takes you. Her followers excitedly count down the days until “SOO” because it taps into something deeper: people craving real experiences, real connection, and real life beyond the screen.

But in LA, getting out there has evolved into something else entirely. Here, it’s not just about living your life. It’s about curating one. La La Land is one of the most advanced environments for turning any life into a full-blown lifestyle and packaging that personality like an Emma Grede-level brand launch.

You can curate every detail of your identity here (wellness, career, taste), because in this town, it’s all for sale. Brands (and the influencers who front them) package entire personas: the pilates girly, the tech bro turned marathon runner, the Nancy Meyers-interior obsessed, the clean wellness guru, the creative director with a film camera. Every version of a person already exists as a fully developed aesthetic package waiting for you to buy into it. Just pick one. Even the “I summer in Europe” guy who somehow turns every conversation back to Mykonos after one boys trip in 2022. We all know him.

And most of it is beautiful. LA sells aspiration better than almost anywhere. We are a city built on fantasy, branding and reinvention. Of course we romanticize ourselves here.

None of those popular identities are inherently bad, by the way. Most start from genuine interests, personal taste or trying to become better versions of ourselves. And the best influencers are rarely performing a persona from scratch. They’re just documenting one that already exists in real life.

But somewhere between the Hot 8 Yoga memberships, non-seed-oil restaurants and perfectly branded routines, it becomes easy to confuse performance with identity. Who are you when nobody’s watching (both online and IRL)?

Do you still take the Carrie’s Pilates classes without posting about it? Do you still write if there’s no caption? Do you still wake up early to run if nobody knows you’re “the marathon guy”? Do you still play pickleball once the cultural obsession dies down? Do you still do the 10-step skincare routine if there’s no “GRWM” video? What about cooking beautiful recipes? Or reading, creating, training, volunteering, praying, practicing or pursuing the thing when it stops being content?


This is the difference between building a life and maintaining the appearance of one. The habits that nourish you, versus the ones that present well.

So what actually holds if the lens of social media and personal marketing went away? Basically: who are you really when there’s nothing to prove to anyone? And what would you still spend your time doing? Because whatever continues in private, is usually who you are at your core and what actually matters to you.

One of my Friends doesn’t exist on social media, but she wakes up before sunrise to work out every single day simply because that’s who she is. No audience, no content strategy, and no performance attached to it.

You can’t fake consistency in private. That’s discipline. And discipline is one of the only luxury items left that can’t be purchased, not even on Rodeo. My Friend never relied on aesthetics to convince herself she was an athlete. No amount of personal branding or matching Alo sets could substitute consistency. It was simply a quiet agreement she made with herself and continues honoring year after year. She simply does what she loves every single day when no one is watching, and by doing that, has built (rather than rented) that identity.

And maybe that’s the strange contradiction of LA in the summer. For all of our obsession with aesthetics with buzzy names (coastal grandmother, hot girl walks, tomato girl summer, model off duty, rich mom energy, tradwives, gym rats, digital nomads…I could keep going), this city also exposes people faster than almost anywhere else.

The problem is when the performance of the lifestyle quietly becomes more important than actually living it. Because eventually, the branding stops carrying you. And summer has a way of bringing things into the light. Longer days, less structure, more sunshine, fuller calendars and a goal to live more and plan less....

What a beautiful season to see what parts of us remain when there’s less time to curate them.

—Your Friend