The Tomato Wasn’t About Your Dad

What the over-personalisation of online discourse tells us about parasocial intimacy, modern validation, and the illusion of being included in everything.

There’s a new kind of internet person. Maybe you’ve met them. Maybe you are them.

You’ll post something not even controversial, just general, and they immediately reply with a 600-word essay explaining how your take failed to account for their exact lived experience, childhood history, and friendship circle.

It doesn’t matter what you said. It could be light. Observational. A cultural read. You could say, “AI is replacing emotional messiness,” and someone will comment that you’re being ableist to people with no access to therapy. Or, “I don’t like tomatoes,” and suddenly it’s about their family’s generational trauma harvesting produce in the sun.

This isn’t commentary by the way. It’s over-personalisation being disguised as moral engagement.

And it’s happening everywhere.

There is now a culture where if your writing/content doesn’t reflect every possible identity or context, you’re seen as careless. If it doesn’t reflect mine, you’re seen as harmful. Even a piece written with clarity and intention gets pulled into emotional obligation, explain yourself, expand the lens and apologise for the thing you didn’t say.

It’s an exhausting performance, and one that turns general commentary into unpaid emotional labour.

General commentary is not personal customer service

I don’t know you. You don’t know me. This isn’t a group chat, a check-in, or a DM. It’s not therapy. It’s not a feedback form. It’s a public post.

But because we consume content in such intimate formats — on phones, alone, in bed, through voices and faces we think we know — everything starts to feel personal. It creates an illusion of familiarity. And with that comes expectation.

Expectation to speak for you. Expectation to represent you. Expectation to anticipate your pain and make room for it, even if the topic has nothing to do with it.

And if that doesn’t happen, there’s an assumed slight. An offence even if unintentional.

What used to be public thought has become a personal contract. And if you break it or worse, don’t acknowledge it, you’ve done harm.

But here's the thing: not everything is about you. And that really shouldn’t be a controversial statement.

The rise of parasocial accountability

Honestly, it’s not just content people are consuming. It’s identity. They follow someone long enough, they start to feel seen. And then entitled.

Entitled to be represented. Entitled to be considered. Entitled to a say in how things are said, or else they’re being left out on purpose.

This is where parasocial intimacy gets messy. Because what looks like thoughtful disagreement is often a covert demand for personal recognition.

Not “I disagree with this,” but “You didn’t think of me.”
Not “This isn’t my view,” but “You should have centred mine.”

What starts as feedback becomes a form of emotional surveillance not just what you say, but what you didn’t say. Who you didn’t mention. What you didn’t explicitly validate.

People expect your public thoughts to reflect their private reality. And if it doesn’t, you’re no longer thoughtful, now you’re irresponsible.

We’ve confused omission with erasure

There is a very real difference between exclusion and focus. Between a narrowed lens and a biased one. But online, we’ve flattened that nuance. If a post doesn’t mention everything, it’s treated as if it’s ignoring something on purpose.

And yes, part of this is algorithmic. The internet encourages boldness but punishes specificity. If you write generally, you’re vague. If you write specifically, you’re excluding someone. There is no winning.

But the deeper issue is emotional. People want to feel seen. Understood. Represented. And when that doesn’t happen even in something that was never meant to be about them, they take it as a personal omission.

But being unseen in someone’s writing doesn’t mean you were erased. It means the writing wasn’t about you. And that should be okay.

Everyone wants vulnerability with perfect formatting.

There’s a performance now to every sentence posted online. You have to be clear but not cold, personal but not self-centred, thoughtful but not too narrow, inclusive but not generic, firm but also soft enough to absorb critique without breaking.

Every word is treated like a line of code, meant to be audited, combed for bugs and patched on demand.

But let’s be real, real thought doesn’t exist like that. It’s very messy. Focused. Sometimes selfish. Sometimes wrong. That’s part of the risk. That’s part of why people write, to figure it out in real time, not issue a fully crowd-proofed stance on every cultural trend.

And when we treat every omission like a moral failure, we make it impossible for people to explore any idea without writing a disclaimer before every paragraph.

No one writes well in fear. And no one builds clarity from constant correction.

Final thought

This isn’t a defence of carelessness. It’s a defence of the right to say something without having to say everything.

If something resonates, great. If it doesn’t, that’s allowed. Not every post has to feel custom-made. And if your instinct is to make it about you, it might be worth asking why.

Because sometimes the tomato is just a tomato.