EVERYONE IS WAITING FOR SOMEONE ELSE
On feedback, brands and the loss of inner position
We live in a time in which every gesture seems to wait for a response. A sentence is published, then measured. An image is shared, then judged. An identity is exposed, then confirmed or rejected. Human communication has entered a continuous feedback machine. Every expression, every opinion, every visible choice seems to have to pass through the gaze of others before becoming real. But the most important point lies elsewhere. We are not only seeking confirmation from others. We are seeking confirmation from people who, in turn, are seeking confirmation from someone else.
The public waits for others.
The brand waits for the public.
Others wait for the trend.
The trend waits for the algorithm.
The algorithm waits for the reaction.
In the end, everyone is looking outward, and almost no one is building a position from within. The data suggest that this is no longer a marginal dynamic. According to Pew Research Center, in 2025, 84% of American adults use YouTube and 71% use Facebook. Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp and Reddit continue to grow, especially as environments for relationships, information, entertainment and the construction of public identity. We are no longer simply talking about platforms. We are talking about social infrastructures. Places where people inform themselves, compare themselves, observe themselves, measure themselves and look for signals on how to be, what to say, what to desire, what to show.
This has deeply transformed the way we communicate. Attention has become a form of validation. Reaction has become a form of orientation. Consensus has become an apparent measure of value. The American Psychological Association, in its health advisory on social media use in adolescence, invites particular attention to social comparison, especially when it concerns beauty, body, status and appearance. This is an important passage, because it shows that the problem is not only how much time we spend online, but the way in which the gaze of others enters the construction of personal value.
Jonathan Haidt, in The Anxious Generation, brings this discussion into a generational dimension. His thesis is that smartphones and social media have contributed to shifting childhood and adolescence away from a life based on play, direct experience and physical relationships, toward a life increasingly mediated by the phone. His position is debated, and not all scholars agree on such a direct cause-and-effect relationship, but the cultural point remains strong: a growing part of contemporary identity is being built inside a space of permanent observation.
Byung-Chul Han, in The Burnout Society, describes a performance society in which the individual is no longer only controlled from the outside, but learns to self-exploit, to perform, to optimize, to remain continuously available. In this sense, feedback is no longer just a response. It becomes pressure. The problem is that this system does not necessarily produce more quality, more depth or more direction. It often produces more adaptation. People learn to say what can be accepted. Content learns to resemble what has already worked. Brands learn to chase what the public seems to want to see.
But if the public itself lives inside a machine of external confirmation, what happens when a brand builds its identity only by listening to that public? Communication becomes unstable. A brand publishes, observes, measures, reads sentiment, checks reactions, studies trends, watches competitors, waits for a response. All of this is useful. Data matter. Listening matters. Feedback matters. But they cannot become the starting point of identity.
This theme is increasingly visible in commercial communication as well. Edelman, in its Brand Trust 2025 report, describes an important shift: trust in brands is no longer built only through grand declarations of purpose, but through relevance, responsibility, clarity of action and a concrete presence in culture and community. People are asking brands for something closer, more real, more useful. But this is where the risk begins. If a brand interprets this request only as a need to be liked, it ends up becoming a fragile mirror of the public.
It reflects what it thinks might work. It repeats what has already been approved. It continuously adapts to the external signal. It loses its center. Les Binet and Peter Field, in their studies on advertising effectiveness, have shown how dangerous it is to confuse immediate response with the construction of long-term value. Short-term metrics can tell us whether something has generated a reaction. But they do not always tell us whether a brand is building memory, trust, recognition and cultural strength. Communication born only from feedback risks no longer having a position. It becomes reactive. It tries to please. It adapts to the signal. It reflects what it thinks might work. A brand, however, should not only be a mirror. It should be a lens. A position. A direction. A way of reading the present and transforming it into language.
Today many brands speak about community, culture, values, belonging. But they often do so by first trying to understand what response they will receive. Before even asking what they are really saying, they ask how they will be perceived. This is where communication loses strength. Because the public does not only need brands that imitate it. It needs brands capable of orienting, opening, interpreting, taking responsibility. Brands that do not speak in order to be confirmed, but because they have understood something about the time they live in. Perhaps today the most important gesture for a brand is not to immediately ask how it will be perceived. It is to ask where it is speaking from.
What has it really understood?
What does it want to add to the world?
What cultural tension is it reading?
What responsibility does it take when it communicates?
Feedback comes after. First, there must be a position. The point is not to ignore the public. The point is to stop asking the public who we are. Because communication built only to receive confirmation becomes fragile. Communication built from a vision, instead, can generate culture, relationship, trust and lasting value. Perhaps the task of communication today is to interrupt this movement. To stop looking only outward. To build a center again. And from there, finally, to speak.