The Frozen God

You made it.

At some point, the thing you were building caught. People started paying attention. Followers accumulated. Opportunities appeared. You became someone whose name meant something, at least in your corner of the internet.

Maybe it happened slowly—years of consistent work finally compounding. Maybe it happened fast—one post, one thread, one moment that the algorithm decided to bless. Either way, you crossed a threshold. You became visible.

And now you feel stuck.

The attention that felt like validation has become expectation. The audience that felt like community has become a weight. Every time you post, you're not just expressing yourself—you're managing a brand. Every time you evolve, you risk alienating the people who followed the old you.

You have what everyone says they want. Why does it feel like a cage?

How You Got Here

The freeze doesn't happen all at once.

It starts with success. Something you make resonates. The algorithm notices. It shows your work to more people—specifically, to people who liked that particular thing.

So you make more of that thing. Why wouldn't you? It's working. The feedback is positive. The metrics are up.

Slowly, imperceptibly, you become the person who makes that thing.

Not because you decided to. Because the system decided for you. Every post that matched the pattern got amplified. Every post that didn't got suppressed. The algorithm was training you, and you didn't even notice.

Your audience crystallized around a version of you that was real—once. That was current—once. But you kept changing, because that's what humans do. And the audience expected you to stay the same, because that's what audiences do.

Now there's a gap. Between who you are and who you're performing. Between what you want to explore and what gets engagement. Between the living person and the frozen brand.

That gap is the freeze.

The Trap

Here's why it's hard to escape: the metrics still look like success.

You're growing. You're getting opportunities. By every external measure, you should be happy. The system is rewarding you.

It's rewarding you for staying frozen.

This is the trap's genius. It doesn't feel like a trap. It feels like winning. The golden handcuffs aren't visible until you try to take them off.

And when you do try—when you post something different, explore a new direction, contradict your established brand—the punishment is immediate. Less reach. Less engagement. Confused comments. "This isn't why I followed you."

So you retreat. Back to the thing that works. Back to the performance. The cage is comfortable, and the world outside is cold.

Some people stay in this trap forever. Keep performing. Keep optimizing. Keep growing the metrics while the person inside gets smaller. They become their brand so completely that there's nothing left behind it.

Others burn out. The dissonance becomes unbearable. They blow up their audience, delete their accounts, disappear. Return to anonymity—but wounded, not renewed.

There is a third option. But it requires something most gods aren't willing to do.

The Death of a God

The only way out of the freeze is through.

Not sideways—you can't pivot your way to freedom. The algorithm will learn your new direction and freeze that too.

Not backward—you can't return to who you were before. That person doesn't exist anymore, and pretending they do is just another performance.

Through. Which means: letting the god die.

This is terrifying. Everything in you will resist it. The attention you've accumulated, the platform you've built, the identity you've become—these feel like you. Letting them die feels like dying.

But here's the truth: that god is already dead. It died the moment it stopped being who you actually are. You've just been animating the corpse, hoping nobody notices.

The death of a god isn't destruction. It's admission. Admitting that the version of you that got the audience isn't the version that exists now. Admitting that staying frozen is slowly killing the living part of you. Admitting that the metrics were never the point.

What does this look like in practice?

• Stop performing the old god. Not dramatically—you don't have to announce your transformation or burn everything down. Just... stop. Let the posts that don't fit you anymore stop appearing. Let the brand that no longer serves you go quiet.
• Grieve what you're losing. The attention will fade. The opportunities will dry up. The metrics will drop. This is real loss. Don't pretend it isn't. Don't spiritually bypass your way past the pain of letting go of something you built.
• Find out who's still there. Some of your audience followed the frozen god. They'll leave. Some of them followed you—the living, evolving person behind the brand. They'll stay. You won't know which is which until the freeze thaws.
• Make room for what's next. The point of death isn't death. It's making space for new life. Once the old god is gone, something else can emerge. Maybe another god. Maybe a dog again. Maybe something you can't predict yet.

The death of a god is not the end of the story. It's the end of a chapter.

→ If you want to understand the way through: re-read The Death of a God above, then