Be Yourself

Be Yourself: Everyone Else Is Already Taken is for anyone who has ever had the nagging feeling that modern life is turning people into brands.

You are told to build a profile, grow a following, optimise your body, curate your taste, perform your opinions, and somehow remain "authentic" while doing it. You are expected to be visible, marketable, attractive, productive, available, and unbothered all at once. That is a ridiculous way to live, and Giles na Magaleen is here to say so.

Funny, clever, and only slightly mischievous, this book looks at how social media, advertising, platform culture, and modern attention economics push young people to treat themselves as products. What used to happen to objects and celebrities now happens to ordinary people: your face, your habits, your friendships, your politics, your dating life, and even your private thoughts can all be pulled into display.

But this is not another boring lecture about "kids these days", and it is not a gloomy anti-technology rant. Be Yourself is written for readers who are already living inside this world and know, better than most adults, how strange it can be. It explores why anger spreads so fast online, why image so often defeats substance, why dating apps can make people feel like items on a shelf, and why endless visibility can leave a person feeling weirdly unreal.

At the centre of the book is a simple but serious idea: growing up is not just about freedom from rules. It is about learning what belongs to you, what should be shared with others, and what should never be handed over to the crowd, the algorithm, or the market. In that sense, becoming an adult is a kind of rite of passage. You pass through noise, pressure, imitation, and performance, and come out the other side with a better sense of what is worth keeping.

Along the way, Giles makes the case for friendship, public space, "third spaces" that are neither home nor work, cheap pleasures, practical hobbies, and forms of fun that do not exist to be posted, rated, or monetised. The book is serious about the sovereignty of the body and the importance of community, but it wears its learning lightly and keeps its sense of humour intact.

Be Yourself: Everyone Else Is Already Taken is for readers aged roughly 15 to 25, and for anyone else young enough to suspect that the most rebellious thing left may be to become a real person instead of a performance.

Funny, sharp, and unexpectedly useful, this is a book about how not to become content.