The Borrowed Self

My grandmother did not have a personal brand. She had a reputation.

We are told to be ourselves while the systems around us quietly suggest which self to be. Feeds do more than organise what we see. They can begin to shape what feels desirable, normal, even like ourselves.

Parnian Kebria grew up in Iran, where identity was held through family, language and shared history, then spent more than a decade in Britain, where she encountered a culture that treated selfhood more as something to choose and build.

From between those worlds, she asks what happens when the same digital systems enter both: when belonging becomes measurable, a winter-solstice tradition becomes a photograph, and the private self is asked to perform.

This is not a book against technology. It is a book about noticing, and about protecting the parts of a life that cannot be measured, posted or sold back to us.

How much of the person I am becoming did I actually choose?