I don’t feel strongly about personal branding, which is probably the most honest way I can begin. I’ve heard the arguments for it and against it. I’ve been told it’s necessary. I’ve also seen what it looks like when it calcifies.

Listening to Adam Grant’s The Case Against Personal Branding, I understood the concern. When people cling too tightly to a curated version of themselves, things can go rigid. They start performing consistency. They narrow. They mistake recognizability for identity. That happens.

But that isn’t always the case. Sometimes branding is just a tool. A way to draw a perimeter around what you’re choosing to offer. It doesn’t mean you’re hiding anything. It means you’re trying to communicate on purpose. To create an entry point that’s legible.

It’s not a new idea. People have always shaped the way they’re perceived – through clothing, language, silence, what they mention and what they don’t. Branding is a more conscious version of that. Sometimes crass. Sometimes useful. Sometimes both.

Jia Tolentino’s episode on identity capitalism made the stakes clearer. When identity itself becomes something extractable – something that can be packaged and sold – the line between sharing and selling gets hard to see. That didn’t feel abstract. I’ve watched people I know struggle with it. The pressure to make your difference productive. To turn experience into deliverables. It’s subtle, but it creeps in.

There’s a particular kind of fatigue that sets in when your sense of self is always being shaped in relation to an imagined audience. Even if you’re saying true things. Even if you believe them. That’s what Tolentino was pointing to, I think – not the lie, but the erosion.

Still, I don’t think personal branding is inherently a problem. It depends on what it’s for. Some people use it to project certainty, and that’s when it starts to feel brittle. But it can also be used to signal boundaries, to mark intention, to give people a basic sense of where you stand. It doesn’t have to tell the whole story. Most stories aren’t told all at once anyway.

I’m aware that what I’m saying isn’t particularly original. There’s no sweeping thesis here. Just a loose agreement with the idea that we shouldn’t confuse the frame with the painting. And that a person isn’t necessarily being false just because they’ve chosen a frame.

I’ve been told I should be clearer about what I “do.” That it would help people understand me. Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it’s a way of asking for a narrative that makes people comfortable. I don’t think discomfort is inherently bad.

What I want – when I’m being honest – is to create work that earns attention without demanding it. To offer a throughline without pretending I’m already sure of the ending. That doesn’t require a brand, exactly, but it does require a kind of coherence. Or maybe just a willingness to be interpreted.

The interpretive gap is where most things live anyway. In that space between what we say and how we’re read. That’s not something to fear. That’s where stories happen. Where people begin to make their own meaning.

So I’m not opposed to personal branding. I just think it’s only ever part of the picture. Not the most interesting part, but not irrelevant either. It’s a form. One of many. Useful when it’s serving the work. Exhausting when it starts to become the work.

I don’t have a personal brand, not really. But I do have a tone. A rhythm. A set of choices I make when I speak or write. That’s probably enough. If people want to follow the thread, they will. If not, that’s fine too.

The episodes didn’t convince me to reject branding or embrace it. They just made me more aware of the tension – between presence and performance, between communication and commodification. It’s a tension I already live with. Most people do.

That’s not a profound insight on my part. It’s just the water we’re in.

— Daniela