One day I came across a TikTok video of a simple bean soup recipe, it was warm, and cozy. Overall it was harmless. But the comments… a war zone. Thousands of comments by people who were genuinely offended that the creator had posted something they personally didn’t enjoy. “But I don’t like beans.” “What if I don’t like soup?” Like the creator had made the video exclusively for them. As if disliking bean soup was a form of oppression. I remember staring at my screen thinking, When did we forget that we can just scroll?
That moment was when I first understood what people now call “Bean Soup Theory,” or “what-about-me-ism.” The mindset that everything we see online should be curated for us. And if it isn’t, then someone must have messed up. It’s a strange symptom of a much bigger cultural shift: hyper-individualism. The internet has trained us to believe we are the center of its universe. Algorithms feed us exactly what we want to see, and after a while, we start expecting that level of personalization everywhere. Anything unfamiliar feels wrong. Anything not tailored to our taste feels offensive. We treat the internet like a mirror and feel betrayed when it suddenly becomes a window.
What stood out most in that bean soup comment section wasn’t that people disliked the recipe, it was the entitlement behind their reactions. It wasn’t “This isn’t for me.” It was “Why would anyone post this?” As if the value of something depends entirely on whether it aligns with their preferences. As if the existence of content you don’t personally enjoy is a personal attack. There was a time when people quietly scrolled past content that wasn’t relevant to them. Now, they announce their disinterest like it’s a public service. We’ve become so accustomed to curated spaces that we don’t know how to coexist with anything that wasn’t designed specifically for us.
(The Reflector: The Bean Soup Effect: Individualism has gone too far)
What made the bean soup situation even stranger for me is that…I actually love bean soup. I grew up eating it. When I saw that video, I was excited. But after opening the comments, I immediately felt like my taste was embarrassing or outdated or somehow wrong. Something as small and harmless as soup suddenly made me question myself. And that’s when I realized just how isolating the personalized internet can be. It convinces you that your preferences are unique and valid, until the crowd shows up to tear them down. Something meant to comfort you ends up making you feel out of place.
This wasn’t just about a recipe; it was about the internet’s ability to turn anything into a referendum on who we are. When thousands of people loudly agree that something you enjoy is strange or gross or “for no one,” it chips away at the confidence you have in your own harmless interests. Social media makes us feel like our tastes are niche and special, but moments like these reveal a different possibility: maybe our feeds aren’t tailored to us at all. Maybe they’re tailored to engagement, which often means outrage, extremity, or whatever sparks the strongest reaction. Maybe the algorithm tells us we’re unique while feeding us the same recycled content everyone else sees, content designed to make us loud, emotional, and online.
And that’s where the loneliness creeps in. The more hyper-personalized the internet becomes, the more we start to believe that everything should revolve around us. When it doesn’t, we feel discomfort. When it does, we feel trapped. The internet used to feel like exploration, an open world full of different people with different interests. Now it feels like a shrinking room where all the walls are mirrors. It’s harder to feel curious when everything is engineered around predictability and personalization. It’s harder to feel connected when everyone is performing their preferences like they’re part of their identity. It’s harder to feel like ourselves when we’re constantly aware of how loudly the crowd can drown us out.
The truth is, I still like bean soup. That hasn’t changed. But I don’t think I’ll ever look at that recipe the same way again, not because I suddenly doubt my taste, but because the internet turned a simple, harmless moment into a debate about individuality, validation, and belonging. A recipe became a reminder of how exhausting it is to exist in spaces where everything is about performance, where people speak before thinking, critique before understanding, and center themselves in conversations that were never meant for them. Online, everyone wants to be the exception. Everyone wants to be the main character. Everyone wants to make sure their “what about me?” is heard.
I miss when the internet felt bigger than that. I miss when the expectation wasn’t that everything needed to appeal to me personally. I miss when scrolling felt like wandering instead of defending myself in the comment section of someone else’s dinner. Maybe the solution isn’t to leave the internet entirely, but to relearn something simple: not everything is about us. Not every video is for us. Not every preference needs validation. And sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is quietly keep scrolling, and let the world be bigger than our own curated bubble.