#stupidindividualism is the manufactured habit of prioritising personal gain and self-interest over collective survival. It is not simply “people being selfish” – it is a social behaviour shaped and reinforced by decades of politics and economics teaching people to see themselves as isolated consumers, competitors and brands.
Forty years of #neoliberalism normalised the idea that individual choice is the highest form of freedom. The language sounds empowering: be independent, maximise your opportunities, look after yourself, compete and succeed. But underneath this is a deeper mess that has shifted our cultural – the erosion of the idea that we are connected, that we have responsibilities to each other, and that communities are something we actively build and maintain.
The result is a strange contradiction, that people are encouraged to believe they are exercising freedom while making choices that reduce their own collective freedom. Choosing convenience over resilience, competition over cooperation, private solutions over public infrastructure, endless consumption over ecological survival. The individual becomes trapped inside blinded paths that reward behaviour harmful to everyone, including themselves.
#stupidindividualism appears when people defend a personal advantage that damages the commons they depend on. It is the person fighting against community organisation because “no one should tell me what to do”, while benefiting from the roads, healthcare, knowledge, ecosystems and social networks created through collective effort. It is the belief that independence means having no obligations, rather than having the power to participate meaningfully with others.
This is not an argument against individuality, as its #kiss obvious that real individuality depends on a healthy commons. Creativity, freedom and personal expression flourish when people have trust, shared resources and supportive communities. The problem is the manufactured isolation that turns people against each other and hides the collective systems that make any individual lives possible.
The challenge for movements like #OMN and the wider #openweb is rebuilding the social habits that #stupidindividualism has weakened: cooperation, trust, sharing, moderation, collective memory and responsibility. We need to move from a culture of isolated consumers competing for scraps towards communities that can create, maintain and defend the commons together. Freedom is not the ability to ignore everyone else. Freedom is the ability to work with others to shape the world we share.
