reflections on rigid thinking
are you holding yourself back?
I saw this dieworkwear tweet earlier this week, and his use of the word rigid perfectly encapsulates how particularly young people adopt trends, ideologies and customs.
In a world where trends, identities, and aesthetics evolve faster than ever, rigidity has shifted from being a strength to a liability. At least in how we express ourselves. While structure still matters in areas like discipline and values, applying that same rigidity to taste and identity traps people in outdated versions of themselves. Digital life accelerates this by rewarding consistency, reinforcing patterns, and turning taste into something performative. The result is a generation that adopts quickly, but evolves slowly, defending identities they haven’t fully explored or developed independently.
When we zoom out, there are two types of rigidity, good and bad, functional and identity. Functional rigidity, is useful, think morals, discipline, diet, training. These are all things that create a stable long term structure. Identity rigidity, on the other hand, is limiting: taste, aesthetics, music, fashion. This is where rigidity creates stagnation, tribalism and a fear of change. Rigidity builds strength when applied to systems that require consistency, but it becomes a weakness when applied to identity in a world that is constantly shifting.
This isn’t new. Young people have always attached themselves to identities, from music scenes to subcultures and political beliefs—and treated them as fixed. But, if young people adopt identities too quickly, older people often hold onto them too rigidly. The behavior is exactly the same, only the timing changes.
You see the same pattern in politics, people continue to vote the same way not because their views are constantly re-evaluated, but because the identity has already been set. How many “life-long republicans” currently agree with Trumps administarion? The instinct is human: once something becomes part of your identity, you protect it. What’s changed is the speed. Digital life accelerates how quickly these identities form, and how strongly they’re reinforced, leaving less room for experimentation or change.
So, how has our digital life and obsession with fitting in affected our rigidity?
The speed at which trends move, means we are becoming quick to adopt them before fully exploring them. Your algorithm then cements it, through the content it feeds you across channels. Spotify, Instagram, TikTok…all of them, are rewarding you for consistency. Because taste is now central to everything (thanks silicon valley) and performative, changing your mind or not fully adhering makes you feel like you’ve lost credibility. The faster trends move, the faster we try to anchor ourselves and the more rigid we become in defending something we barely had time to understand.
In fashion, we often speak about micro and macro trends. Skinny jeans are macro, no matter how long you want to deny it, they are long term and will always find their way back. Then we have something like boat shoes, Miu Miu popularised them and Massimo Dutti is pushing them out as we speak, micro, a short seasonal trend that won’t be revisited next summer. Then we also have trends that go along with life stages. Like getting into suits alongside your first corporate job or really into athleisure with your new HYROX buddies.
But there is no problem with following trends, like the original tweet about wearing loafers, nothing wrong with it. The problem is freezing inside one version of yourself while the world keeps moving.
You see this most clearly in how people react to artists. When someone like Miley Cyrus, or more recently Addison Rae, evolves their sound or image, the response is often that it feels inauthentic or forced. But that reaction says more about the audience than the artist. People get attached to a fixed version of someone, and when that version changes, it creates friction. Instead of accepting the evolution, they reject it. Calling it fake is easier than admitting that people are allowed to change and that maybe you are too.
Rigidity turns preference into identity, and identity into something you feel the need to defend even when it’s no longer evolving. Rigid thinking only protects you and your sense of fitting in. But, rigidity doesn’t just limit what you try, it limits who you can become. It keeps you aligned with a version of yourself that may already be outdated.
lmk ur thoughts in the comments xx