Last week, I almost bought a Labubu.
Not because I liked it or needed it, but because everyone I knew had one.
My finger hovered over “submit order” before I caught myself.
In that moment, I realized how easy it is to follow the herd without even noticing.
The herd doesn’t stop at trends.
It lives in boardrooms too.
Where we’re paid to think differently, but rewarded for reading which way the room is leaning.
We’ve all watched a good idea die because it entered at the wrong angle, or a mediocre one survive because the right person said it first.
We’ve sat silent when we disagreed.
We’ve nodded when we had doubts.
We’ve shaped our objections into questions so soft they barely registered as resistance.
We told ourselves it was strategy, not fear.
We tell ourselves we’re independent thinkers.
Then we join communities of independent thinkers, reading the same books, nodding at the same conferences.
I don’t actually know if I wanted the Labubu.
I can’t tell anymore where influence ends and preference begins.
Maybe I liked it because everyone else did.
Maybe even my resistance was its own conformity, the need to be different, just another herd.
So here I am, writing about not following the herd.
Posting it where essays about not following the herd get liked and shared by people who pride themselves on not following the herd.
Maybe freedom isn’t about choosing differently.
Maybe it’s awareness and acceptance that there is no moment of pure choice untouched by influence.
No authentic self waiting to emerge once we’ve peeled away enough layers.
Knowing this changes nothing.
I’m still going to post this.
You’re still going to react to it.
We’ll still perform our little dance of awareness, mistaking seeing the trap for stepping out of it.
The Labubu’s still in my cart.
I’ll probably buy it and pretend it was free choice.
